Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Tied Cottages

Mr. Lawrence: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the average level of rent paid by retired agricultural workers and widows of retired agricultural workers living in housing belonging to the landowners and farmers who previously employed them.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang): No official statistics are available. But, judging by data in respect of serving farmworkers, I would expect the average to be low. And I would not be surprised if the majority paid no rent at all.

Mr. Lawrence: Does not the Minister agree that these rents are likely to be extremely low by current standards and that if tied cottages were abolished and their rents put on a fair rent basis, the increases would be savage? Will he not further agree that the Government's proposals to abolish the tied cottage system are likely to cause great distress to elderly people living in these cottages? What does he propose to do about it?

Mr. Strang: I reject utterly the implications of the hon. Member's remarks. The Government have no intention of raising farm workers' rents savagely.

Mr. Ashton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is his estimate of the number of farm-workers living in tied cottages; and how many of these workers are called

out on emergencies more that 12 times per year.

Mr. Strang: It can be inferred that at least 70,000 farmworkers live in tied Cottages in England and Wales. But there are no official estimates on this or the frequency with which they are called out on emergencies.

Mr. Ashton: Did not the Tavistock Report State that, of the farm workers in tied cottages, 50 per cent. Were never called out at all and, of the other 50 per cent., a third were called out Probably less than twice a year? Does not this make a mockery of the farmer's Claims that the industry could not run without the tied Cottage System?

Mr. Strang: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The Tavistock Report, from a fine, independent inquiry has been monstrously misrepresented by certain sections of the farming industry, including farmers and landlords.

Mr. Bulmer: Will the Minister accept that a third of those in tied cottages have retired and are therefore unlikely to be called out, and that the same research to which he referred indicated that a majority of those living in tied accommodation thought it essential for some farm workers to live in tied accommodation in order to do their work properly? Does he understand that the weather waits for no man?

Mr. Strang: I was brought up on a farm and know a little about agriculture and farm workers, but let me make it absolutely clear to the hon. Member that we have no intention of introducing legislation that will prevent farm workers from continuing to live on farms.

Miss Maynard: Does my hon. Friend agree that in 1948 34 per cent. of farm workers lived in tied cottage accommodation, and that in 1975 there are 55 per cent. who live in tied accommodation? Does not this indicate that the farmers are able to hold their labour force in general in the industry only through the tied cottage system and low wages? Will my hon. Friend give a firm pledge that the legislation to abolish the tied cottage system will be introduced by St. Valentine's Day?

Mr. Strang: I must confess to my hon. Friend that I am not sure when St.


Valentine's Day is, but I give her the assurance that there is no weakening in the Government's resolve to protect farm workers from eviction and from the threat of eviction in the future.

Mr. Evelyn King: Is it not a fact that herdsmen are called out on emergencies twice a day at milking times and that no herdsman in his senses wishes to walk back to his village in between the two milking times? Is it not a fact, further, that every kind of research has proved the hon. Gentleman to be wrong, and that persons who live in tied cottages like to live in tied cottages?

Mr. Strang: The hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand what this issue is about.

Mr. Evelyn King: I have milked. Has the hon. Gentleman?

Mr. Strang: I have milked, and by hand, too. Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman that under our new legislation farm workers and dairymen will continue to live in their present houses and that nothing will be instantly changed. What will change is that a farmer will not be able to get a farm worker out of a house solely on the basis of agricultural need.

Mr. Beith: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what consideration he has given to the particular problems which may arise in agricultural employment in border areas such as Northumberland if the agricultural tied cottage system is abolished in England but not in Scotland.

Mr. Strang: It is too early to say whether any such difficulties will arise. This will depend on the form of legislation introduced by my right hon. Friends and whether local situations would in any way be affected by the separate timetable for Scotland, to which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State referred in his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Cook) on 22nd October—[Vol. 898, c. 458–9.]

Mr. Beith: Does the Minister recognise that, whether this proposal proves a success or a disaster, there is a danger that agricultural employment could, for a time at least, be more attractive on one side of the border than on the other?

Does the Minister recognise that it is of the utmost importance that the farm-worker should have a house near his job when he wants one, and that, if he is prevented from obtaining a house because no alternative arrangements have been made for retired workers, due to lack of money in local authorities, he will be in no way helped?

Mr. Strang: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I am confident that our legislation will turn out to be an enormous success for agriculture. The hon. Member has raised some important issues. Although we are introducing a Bill on devolution, we shall not solve the problem by redrawing the English border so that it corresponds to farm boundaries.

Cod Supplies

Mr. Clegg: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what progress is being made to find alternative catches for cod fishermen.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. E. S. Bishop): Cod stocks on existing grounds are fully exploited and there are no alternative areas in which the British fleet might be deployed. However, work is being continued on other fish resources which we might utilise.

Mr. Clegg: Is the Minister aware that the search for alternative resources following the Law of the Sea Conference is vital and should be proceeding now?

Mr. Bishop: I recognise the hon. Member's concern. As he will be aware, we have had monitoring voyages and the results have been very encouraging, especially with the blue whiting taken in mid-water trawls off the British Isles in the spring. The matter is being researched by my Department. There is the question of processing and, eventually, marketing, but we are doing our best to find alternative species to help the industry.

Mr. James Johnson: As catches in Icelandic waters provide a large percentage of the total catch of fleets from places such as Fleetwood and Hull, can my hon. Friend tell us whether there is any likelihood of a resumption of talks and also what is happening towards getting a settlement of this vexing dispute?

Mr. Bishop: I appreciate my hon. Friend's constructive question. He will be aware that the waters around Iceland provide one-third of our cod catch and are very important to us, especially in the light of what I said in reply to the previous supplementary question. I understand that there is a possibility of a meeting between my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the Icelandic Foreign Minister today. We hope that we can get a resumption of talks at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. McNamara: In view of the importance my hon. Friend attaches to this matter, can he say what progress is being made in discussions on the EEC common fisheries policy? How many meetings have been held at ministerial or official level? What sort of catch for the British Isles does my hon. Friend consider suitable? How many men will be employed and what range of vessels will be used?

Mr. Bishop: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern about this matter, which is very important if we are to give confidence to the industry about its future shape and prospects. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture told the Community as early as last April that we could not wait until 1982 to renegotiate the Treaty of Accession in this respect. He said that it was urgent because we had the largest fishing industry in the Community. Proposals are being prepared by the Commission and I should not like to comment on them now except to say that they are being discussed at official level and that Ministers are involved.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is the Minister aware that a promise has been given that these measures will be announced this week? Can he give the House some advance information about them, as they will be made public knowledge by the European Parliament in the next five days?

Mr. Bishop: My right hon. Friend will be in Brussels early next week. The question of how soon the Commission's proposals are published is a matter for the Commission. We shall want to study them very carefully before making any further pronouncements on the matter.

Whale Products

Mr. Raphael Tuck: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has had concerning his refusal to take steps to prohibit the import of sperm whale products into the Unted Kingdom.

Dr. Glyn: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in view of the policies now adopted by the United States Government and the Government of New Zealand on the banning of whale products, if he will now reconsider his policy not to do the same.

Mr. Bishop: I have received a number of letters from conservation societies and others on the extension of the existing ban on the import of whale products to cover products of the sperm whale. I believe that products from the sperm whale should continue to be exempt from the ban since stocks of sperm whales are not indanger of over-exploitation and because certain industries would face very real difficulties if these products were not available. However, United Kingdom research into satisfactory substitutes continues with Government encouragement.

Mr. Tuck: Why did my hon. Friend refuse to accept a parcel of sperm oil substitutes delivered to him for examination this morning by the Friends of the Earth? Is he aware that there are adequate substitues for all uses of sperm oil and that I have a list of them with me if he wants to see it? Does he realise that the whale may disappear from our oceans and never return? Will he at least follow the example of the United States and New Zealand by banning imports of sperm oil products and work towards a 10-year moratorium on commercial whaling as resolved at the Stockholm Conference?

Mr. Bishop: I shall clarify the position. I am aware that many hon. Members were told that the Friends of the Earth were meeting me today. Unfortunately, I had not been told. The Friends of the Earth later wrote to tell me that they would see me at 9.30 a.m. when, as Opposition Members know, I was involved in preparing for a Commitee


debate. I wrote to the Friends of the Earth saying that I would see them this evening, and I am looking forward to doing so. I am sorry that there has been a mix-up in communications. In any case, I do not accept gifts.
For many years I have been concerned about finding ways to conserve whales. We have not done any whaling since 1963 and we are actively concerned with research into substitutes for sperm oil. Those who want an immediate ban on the use of sperm whale products must recognise the consequences to industry and the costs, because the oil is very important to us. We are pressing for the use of substitutes as soon as we can find them.

Dr. Glyn: I am not as interested in the lobby of the Friends of the Earth as I am in the preservation of the whale. Does the Minister agree that there are alternative substances, either natural or synthetic, which can replace sperm oil, whether in the manufacture of ladies' gloves or for other purposes? Will the Minister's Department look into the question, not necessarily from the point of view of a 10-year moratorium, but to see whether we can bring ourselves into line with two other Governments—New Zealand and the United States—both of which have considered this matter seriously? Will the Minister tell me of one product which cannot be replaced synthetically?

Mr. Bishop: Substitutes for the manufacture of ladies' gloves are not to hand, but we are pursuing the possibility of substitutes. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concern—and that of others—but I remind him that the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission has given us advice, which we accept. In the International Whaling Commission talks in London—which I was honoured to open—an amendment, called the Australian amendment, was passed, categorising the scarcity of species. We are aware that we must try to keep all the members of the Commission together, because if members do not co-operate, nothing can be done. We are very much seized of the importance of this matter.

Home-Grown Food

Mr. Michael Latham: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will now make a further

statement on the progress to date towards the objectives contained in the White Paper Food from our own Resources."

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether, in the light of the import saving which would result from the increased availability of home-grown food processed by British food firms, he will accelerate the introduction of the measures advocated in the White Paper, "Food from Our Own Resources."

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Fred Peart): I refer the hon. Members to the reply which my hon. Friend gave the hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) on 23rd October. In the Annual Review, which has now started, we are reviewing the state of the industry in the light of the strategy set out in the White Paper.—[Vol. 898, c. 222.]

Mr. Latham: Do not the deplorable September livestock returns show clearly that agriculture is moving backwards? Is not expansion threatened, first, by the Government's capital taxation policies and, secondly, by their biased attitude towards tied cottages?

Mr. Peart: I cannot accept that. Beef prices show a return of confidence which has been caused by my being able to obtain a premium system, which has worked. The hon. Gentleman must also recognise the return of confidence that is developing in the milk industry. Milk production has increased considerably over that of last year.

Mr. Torney: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, rather than making agriculture a political football, as the Opposition often do, it would be better for the country if my right hon. Friend were to consider the setting up of an all-party Select Committee to examine the industry and determine how to put into effect the policy contained in the White Paper "Food from our own Resources"?

Mr. Peart: The setting up of a Select Committee is a matter not for me but for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I resent the gloom-mongering of some hon. Members. I think that confidence is returning.

Mr. Winterton: Does the Minister accept that the figures for the cattle


breeding herd, the dairy herd and the pig breeding herd are all down? I could enumerate more. Is he satisfied with investment in agriculture? Does he not feel that Government policies militate against further investment? Is he satisfied with the level of profitability of the food manufacturing and processing industry which is, in my view, minute? Does it allow for expansion and encourage new investment?

Mr. Peart: We still adhere to the White Paper "Food from our own Resources", which reveals the Government's strategy. I accept that for various reasons there has been some measure of retrenchment, but I cannot accept the gloom that some people purvey in the House and outside. In the dairy sector, which is important for the beef sector, and in the livestock sector, including beef in hill farming areas, there is a considerable improvement in confidence. I intend to hold on to what I achieved in Brussels for the beef régime.

Mr. Hardy: Far from the September livestock figures being unsatisfactory, does not my right hon. Friend agree that the pig breeding herd is substantially larger than it was a year ago—by 14,000 animals—and is not that evidence that he is pursuing his policy as effectively as possible?

Mr. Peart: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's reference to the pig breeding herd as another example of confidence returning. The same also applies in the cereals sector. There are still great problems of inflation, which affect not only the farming community but all sectors. I am anxious that the Price Review determinations and what I achieve at the negotiations in Brussels will help the farming community.

Mr. Jopling: I accept that things are not so bad as they were. However, will the Minister please stop describing as gloom merchants those who refer to his figures showing that agricultural production is likely to be severely reduced this year? Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that the target contained in the White Paper is a 3 per cent. expansion in the five years to 1980? Is it not likely that this year's overall production will be 7 per cent. down rather than 3 per cent. up, and, therefore, that for the re-

maining four years we shall have to expand at the rate of 5½ per cent. rather than 3 per cent.? Will the Minister make sure that that rate of expansion is achieved?

Mr. Peart: That figure was not a target: it was an objective. I cannot be specific each year about the annual rate of production. All I am saying is that there has been a period of retrenchment in the industry over this year, but in certain key commodities there has been an improvement. Milk production will be greater than it was last year.

Hill Cow Suckler Herd

Dr. John A. Cunningham: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he will make a statement concerning his policy towards the future role of the hill cow suckler herd.

Mr. Peart: The hill cow suckler herd is important both with regard to the economic position of the hill areas and as an integral part of the beef breeding herd. The White Paper "Food from our own Resources" recognised that beef production rather than dairying could make the best use of resources in the uplands, and the Government expect the hill cow suckler herd to continue to play an important part in future beef production.

Dr. Cunningham: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Is he aware that returns to producers in England from this source are still not yet up to the levels in 1973, as his Department confirmed in a recent answer? Given the significant increases in costs of fertilisers and feed to farmers on hill and upland farms, what proposals has he in mind to increase their returns and to maintain the viability of areas such as West Cumbria, which he knows so well, in this aspect of agricultural policy?

Mr. Peart: I know that my hon. Friend, who represents a hill farming area, is anxious that the hill farmers—and particularly those who are responsible for the suckler herds—should have confidence and adequate returns. Calf and store cattle prices at the autumn sales have been considerably higher than last year, and in some cases are back to 1973 levels.

Mr. Geraint Howells: Will the Minister say why the Government will not pay the hill cow subsidy in full, as recommended by his counterparts in Europe?

Mr. Peart: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have said over and over again that I shall reexamine this if necessary but I believe that the firmness of the market shows that returns are adequate and that there is confidence. We are also operating the less-favouredareas directive.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Will not the right hon. Gentleman agree that, although things have marginally improved in the hills, there is a very long way to go and a great deal of difficulty still for those producing beef in the hills? Is it not necessary, therefore, to give them some injection of confidence?
As the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Howells) has just suggested, would not the payment of the full Community level of subsidy be one way of doing that? Will the right hon. Gentleman not agree that, unless this is done, there will be a drying up of production from the hills? Is it not the foreign buyers who are buying and improving the market for calves from the hills?

Mr. Peart: European Community aid is a matter which we shall consider when we have our discussions on prices, which will be very soon.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in Northern Ireland his recent statement about the increase has been welcomed in County Fermanagh and County Tyrone where this subsidy is being paid at the moment? Will he have a serious look at parts of North Antrim and County Londonderry? Will he also extend the increase there?

Mr. Peart: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I take an interest in Northern Ireland agriculture. I have visited the area, and I know Antrim and Londonderry. I shall look at this with special reference to what the hon. Gentleman has said, and when I have made my investigation of it, I shall write to him.

Horticulture

Mr. Blaker: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he next expects to meet the National

Farmers' Union to discuss the problems of the horticultural industry.

Mr. Strang: The current Annual Review will provide the opportunity for such discussions.

Mr. Blaker: Is the Minister aware that the National Farmers' Union is very concerned that growers in the glasshouse sector will be very severely hit by the recent heavy increase in the cost of fuel oil, which represents such a very high proportion of their costs? Is he also aware that Holland, Belgium and Germany are assisting their glasshouse growers with the cost of fuel oil to the full extent agreed by the European Community?
If the Minister is not prepared to give our own growers in the glasshouse sector similar assistance on a national basis, will he at least press for an agreed Community scheme to be put into force so that our growers may be able to compete fairly?

Mr. Strang: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the way the oil companies have decided to increase their prices will have an adverse effect on horticulture. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is important that, if we are to remain in the Community, we ensure that competition is fair. I am sure that he will welcome the fact that the Commission is now challenging the Dutch proposals and the Dutch scheme.

Mr. Newens: Is my hon. Friend aware that in the Lea Valley it is estimated that the increase in the price of oil and other expenses in the coming year will add at least 19p to 20p to the cost of a 12 lb. box of produce? Is he aware that this is extremely serious and that in relation to the Dutch, who get their fuel so much cheaper, our industry is placed in such a difficult situation that it will face extinction in due course unless something is done? Will he give further consideration, therefore, to the recommendation for a subsidy if some other agreement cannot be arrived at early on to give our industry the protection it needs?

Mr. Strang: I recognise my hon. Friend's deep concern and interest in his horticultural constituents. I would point out that in Holland the bulk of the heating comes from gas, and the European Commission is seeking to force up the


price of gas. However, I accept the basis of my hon. Friend's remarks. Certainly the Government are anxious to see the continuance of a prosperous and efficient horticultural industry.

Mr. Hicks: I acknowledge that the European Economic Commission is investigating the matter in respect of Holland. However, will the hon. Gentleman recognise the urgency of the position for our domestic growers? Will he ask his right hon. Friend when he goes to Brussels next week to investigate the possibility of rationalising the method of aid to national growers, thus doing away with the accusation of unfair competition?

Mr. Strang: I do not quite understand that question. However, as the hon. Gentleman's leader is seated beside him, I may as well put the point that there is a limit to the extent to which Opposition Members can press for Government subsidies for private industry at the same time as complaining about the public sector borrowing requirement.

Farm Modernisation

Mr. David Walder: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the net cost of farm modernisation schemes last year.

Mr. Strang: Have we come to Question No. 9? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."]
The net cost of farm modernisation schemes in the United Kingdom for the calendar year 1974 was £83·2 million. This figure covers grant expenditure under the farm capital grant schemes 1970 and 1973, the horticulture capital grant schemes 1973 and the Farm and Horticulture Development Regulations 1973.

Mr. Walder: Is the Minister aware—apart from the fact that he is answering Question No. 9—that that figure is inevitably disappointing, bearing in mind the effect of inflation on farmers, and, of course, the decline in the value of money? How does he square that with the objectives set out in his own White Paper?

Mr. Strang: There is a problem here in relation to the Farm and Horticulture Development Scheme by which we have been required to lay down certain conditions as a result of membership of the Community which are bureaucratic and which we are seeking to simplify. We

hope that this simplification will considerably increase the uptake.

Eggs

Mr. Hardy: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he has received representations concerning the possibility of large quantities of eggs being imported from France in the first quarter of 1976; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Bishop: My right hon. Friend has received representations on these lines. Sales of French eggs in this country have, however, recently been at relatively low levels and the sales in other markets have increased. I have no evidence to suggest that this trend, which has in part been encouraged by Community action, will be reversed.

Mr. Hardy: I congratulate my hon. Friend on sorting out the tangle of difficulty with arsenical additives and so on. However, will he bear in mind that there are fears that the continuing over-production of eggs in France seems likely to lead to dumping in this country in the early part of 1976? Will my hon. Friend also note that a recent attempt to sell British eggs in France has been entirely unsuccessful, and will he draw this fact to the attention of British consumers in the hope that they will not overlook that reaction?

Mr. Bishop: I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern and I take note of his comment about the difficulty of selling British eggs in France. However, by changing the situation with regard to the use of arsenical additives we have at least now made it possible to export eggs to France. But it is a matter of being competitive. My hon. Friend will be pleased to note that France sent us only 2,100 boxes of the estimated total of supplies in the week ending 23rd November—total supplies that week were 727,000 boxes—representing only ·38 per cent. of our total supplies. There are also other indications that export restitutions are encouraging the export of eggs from France to third countries, and I understand that check placings in the Community in the first half of this year were down on last year's figure.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Actual size in this matter is not important. Will the


hon. Gentleman assure the House that exports in both directions are being treated by Governments on both sides of the Channel in exactly the same way?

Mr. Bishop: We are very sensitive about the importance of this matter. Now that we have made it possible for British eggs to be exported, we want to make sure there is freedom in this situation. We are in touch with the French authorities and, indeed, with the Community to bring about a greater stability in supply and demand in relation to eggs.

Meat (Cold Stores)

Mr. Mates: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many tons of unprocessed meat is held in cold stores in areas covered by the Dock Labour Scheme.

Mr. Peart: The information available to my Ministry about food held in cold stores does not distinguish between stores located in ports to which the Dock Labour Scheme applies, stores in non-scheme ports and stores elsewhere in the country. The total quantity of unprocessed meat other than poultry meat held in public cold stores on 21st November 1975 was 102,000 tons.

Mr. Mates: As we import over 500,000 tons of meat, carcase meat and offal, which has to come through cold stores, will not the new Dock Work Regulation Bill have a very serious impact on our food supplies should there be a dispute in that area? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Prior) and my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling) have pointed this out on separate occasions to the Secretary of State for Employment, to no avail, will the Minister take his right hon. Friend to one side and tell him that, above all, our priorities must be our food supplies and not that particular piece of dogmatic Socialism?

Mr. Peart: I think that the hon. Gentleman is crying "Wolf" too soon. The Dock Work Regulation Bill was given its First Reading only the other day. It provides that the National Dock Labour Board should consult me. I believe that that will help considerably. I do not wish to disturb imports of food into Britain

Mr. Buchan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it might have been more appropriate if the hon. Member for Petersfield (Mr. Mates) had paid a little more attention to dogmatic inefficiency, and particularly to the dogmatic inefficiency of the intervention scheme of the Common Market whereby there are three times the amount of beef in cold store as a result of intervention and 1,200,000 tons of dried milk?

Mr. Peart: As my hon. Friend probably knows, Question No. 15 relates to intervention. I shall answer him then.

Mr. Jopling: Is the Minister aware that if the present Dock Labour Scheme, which covers 3 ½ per cent. of cold storage capacity in this country, were extended to the five-mile band, it would cover 63 per cent. of our capacity? Is he further aware that his support for the Bill has caused wide dismay in that, in the event of a strike, the Bill would have sinister implications for food supplies for the British housewife, and sinister implications for fanners, as there may be a danger of stopping up the supply of feedingstuffs for British livestock?

Mr. Peart: I think that the hon. Gentleman is crying "Wolf". After all, the Bill will be debated, and there are safeguards: I have given one example, on consultation. Furthermore, I believe that unions act responsibly.

Agricultural Mortgage Corporation

Mr. Mawby: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how much was borrowed from the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation last year.

Mr. Bishop: During the year ending 31st March 1975 loans amounting to £37·9 million were made to the industry by the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation Limited.

Mr. Mawby: I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. However, as I understand it, this is less than that borrowed in the previous year. Taking into account inflation, capital costs must be higher. Is the hon. Gentleman happy with this situation? Does he believe that there is sufficient confidence in the industry and that people are not laying off borrowing money for capital development—which is needed to attain the target


specified in the White Paper—because of threats of additional capital taxation?

Mr. Bishop: As the hon. Gentleman has implied, there has been a decline in lending during the past year. That has happened for a number of reasons, including reduction in land values, cash flow problems and high interest rates. There are already indications, which have evidently even trickled through to the Opposition Front Bench, that there is greater confidence in the industry now. We expect that, with the working out of the White Paper and with the forthcoming Price Review, this confidence will accelerate.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the levels of interest paid on loans from the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation are very high? Is it not time to look at the rates of interest—rarely above 5 per cent.—paid by European farmers on loans from the various organisations in the European farming industry?

Mr. Bishop: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the rates charged by the AMC are governed by the cost of the money which the Corporation raises from time to time by debenture issues on the money market and which reflect the long-term nature of its borrowings. However, the rates are competitive with those that farmers would have to pay elsewhere. In the long run, the real answer is to tackle the problem of inflation, because that will help to resolve some of these difficult issues.

Skimmed Milk (EEC Stocks)

Mrs. Millie Miller: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the present level of skimmed milk stocks in the European Economic Community.

Mr. Peart: The total amount of skimmed milk powder held in storage by EEC intervention agencies on 27th November was 1,083,000 metric tonnes.

Mrs. Miller: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the distaste with which the housewife of this country hears about the over-production of food and of its ultimate storage at heavy cost to the taxpayer? Is he aware that in the Common Market countries every cow is being sub-

sidised at the rate of £ 40 per head? Does he realise that this is a situation that in the end will cause the complete collapse of the common agricultural policy and with it our dairy farmers, who are unable to compete with the inefficient dairy farmers in Europe?

Mr. Peart: I have always accepted that surpluses of that kind are wasteful. That is why we are trying, through the stocktaking exercise, to readjust the Community's policy. This problem does not exist only in Europe. Many other parts of the world, such as the United States of America and Australia, have the problem of surpluses of skimmed milk. I am aware of the problem.

Mr. Marten: One of the Commission's proposals to get rid of the surplus of dairy products is a two-tier price system for this country's milk. Will the Minister assure us that he will oppose that and virtually veto it if the Commission should persist?

Mr. Peart: The hon. Gentleman is aware that I appeared before the Scrutiny Committee the other day and discussed part of this matter with his colleagues and himself. I shall note the point. It will inevitably come up in Brussels. On the main issue, I believe that these surpluses should be dealt with quickly. It may well be that they will have to be disposed of in food aid elsewhere. However, above all I stress that the United Kingdom is a very efficient dairy producing area.

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRADE

Mr. Pattie: asked the Prime Minister whether he will dismiss the Secretary of State for Trade.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): No, Sir.

Mr. Pattie: Does the Prime Minister recall that during the course of his disastrous performance here last Thursday he told the House that the referendum result had been utterly decisive? How does he reconcile that degree of finality with his right hon. Friend's membership of a Labour Party watchdog committee designed to monitor the activities of the


EEC? Can we now take it that the doctrine of collective responsibility has been finally laid to rest?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong about this matter. I have read the transactions of this particular committee. I did not think that it was particularly a Labour Party committee. I understood that some Opposition Members were on it. The Committee specifically said that it accepted the decision of the referendum.

Mr. Noble: Does my right hon. Friend accept that Labour Members do not share the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie)? Will he also accept that he and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade have a golden opportunity next week to appear as Santa Claus in Lancashire, providing that they are prepared to listen to the voices of the united Labour movement through the TUC, the Labour Party conference, the Parliamentary Labour Party yesterday and the liaison committees at work in Lancashire and throughout the country on the subject of import controls? Will he accept the invitation to appear as Santa Claus and not as a star character in "A Christmas Carol"?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend could have added to that list the CBI. Neither the CBI nor the TUC is in favour of generalised import controls for our balance of payments, but they take the view—we have said that we accept that view—that where sectors of industry that have a future are being threatened for their very existence by imports in a world depression, we must look at the matter.
This matter has been fully investigated and I have every confidence that a statement will be made in the House before we rise. However, there is a problem. Negotiations are still taking place on the very difficult Chrysler problem. The Chrysler problem could involve this matter. I do not want to say more than that. That is why there has been the delay.

Mrs. Thatcher: I wonder whether the Prime Minister could clarify a statement on import controls that was made in the House last night after Ten o'clock. The Minister of State, Treasury, in reply to a question by my right hon. and learned

Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), gave an assurance that there were no secret negotiations on the subject of import controls. Does that mean that there are no negotiations at all, or that the Prime Minister is going ahead without them?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that question. I have not seen the particular words used, but I accept her account of them. There have been no negotiations on this matter—if by that is meant international negotiations. Certain procedures have to be followed. Those procedures have not started for the reasons I have just given to the House. Therefore, there is no question of any secret negotiations taking place, but procedural consultations in accordance with our international obligations would be necessary in certain circumstances. I have explained to the House—I have perhaps gone further than any of my colleagues in this matter—that the issue has been held up because of the difficult situation, which is still continuing, concerning Chrysler. Indeed, negotiations are taking place today.

SPECIAL ADVISERS

Mr. Gow: asked the Prime Minister if he will reduce below the present figure of seven the number of his special advisers; and what is the present total cost of the salaries of these advisers.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. The total annual cost of salaries for the Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street is about £ 43,000.

Mr. Gow: Will the Prime Minister tell the House what areas of Government policy would have been less damaging to the country had the advice of these gentlemen not been followed? Since advice is always available to the Prime Minister from the Tribune Group—presumably free of charge—does he not think that it would be more appropriate for the salaries of this rather discredited retinue of Marxists to be paid by Transport House rather than by the taxpayer?

The Prime Minister: I suppose that might go down well with the Primrose League in Eastbourne. If I thought that


it was right to waste the time of the House and prevent other hon. Members putting serious questions, I would simply tell the hon. Gentleman that this was in accordance with the provisions laid down by the Fulton Committee. My predecessor had special advisers who were paid for by the Treasury. The suggestion that Dr. Donoughue is a discredited Marxist makes me laugh.

TUC AND CBI

Mr. Michael Latham: asked the Prime Minister when he next expects to meet the CBI.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) on 25th November.

Mr. Latham: Will the Prime Minister tell the CBI when next he meets it whether he accepts the warning in the Bank of England's December Quarterly Bulletin that public expenditure must take a smaller proportion of our national resources if the economy is to regain its strength?

The Prime Minister: I spoke on these lines about the base not only at the Guildhall recently, but when I addressed the National Council on Social Services yesterday. I shall tell the CBI that the whole House, I hope, is encouraged by the CBI's latest survey on industrial trends, and I hope that some hon. Member—perhaps some right hon. Member—will get up and say so.

Mr. Watkinson: Will my right hon. Friend consider giving an added impetus to the growth of the economy by limiting hire-purchase restrictions?

The Prime Minister: I cannot anticipate the statement on the economy that will be made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer when we have the debate on the economic situation next week.

SELF-EMPLOYED

Mr. Paul Dean: asked the Prime Minister whether he will now allocate to a senior Cabinet Minister special responsibility for the self-employed.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. As my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council told the House on 24th July 1975, matters arising from the diversity of the activities and interests of the self-employed do not form a coherent whole, important though they are, and are better handled on the basis of existing ministerial responsibilities.

Mr. Dean: Is the Prime Minister aware that in answer to recent questions I have been told that there have been no meetings with the self-employed about the proposals in the Gracious Speech? As the self-employed and small businesses play a vital part in our economy, surely they are as entitled to be consulted as the big battalions, the TUC and the CBI?

The Prime Minister: I recognise that the hon. Gentleman has an important point here. However, it is not an argument for having a Minister with responsibility for the self-employed. For example, some of the self-employed are principally concerned—I am thinking particularly of those in the retail and wholesale trades—with the activities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection and others are concerned with purely industrial questions. In my contacts with the CBI I have always felt that it was fully responsive to small businesses and it has made many representations on their behalf. At the CBI's quarterly councils small businesses predominate in the representation.

Mr. Thorpe: Even if we accept the Prime Minister's premise, is it not extraordinary that the Secretary of State for Social Services should use her powers to vary by order the national insurance contribution and put it up by 8 per cent. on gross profits of over £ 3,600 without reference to the self-employed and apparently without any idea of the increased number of bankruptcies that this might create? If he will not allocate a Minister, is there not at least a case for there being greater consultation or, to put it at its lowest, as much consultation as he is prepared to have with the TUC and the CBI?

The Prime Minister: There is the fullest consultation with the Ministers responsible. The House had a full debate on this matter on 4th November. All


such questions as those in the right hon. Gentleman's mind were fully dealt with in that debate, which is better by far than to try to deal with them at Question Time.

Mr. Heffer: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many hon. Members on this side of the House are in full support of the fullest possible assistance being given to small business men? Is he aware that some people who are supposedly self-employed, particularly in the construction industry, have a record of avoiding tax and national insurance payments and are therefore a threat to the very structure of that industry? Will he make it clear that, although we support the genuine small business man, we cannot accept the bogus self-employed?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend has on a number of occasions pressed this point, which is fully accepted in the construction trade. He will recall that the House legislated on this matter in the previous Session. However, he is right to point out that there are many anxieties, outside the particular group of people to whom he referred, about the problems of small businesses.
My right hon. Friends and I have given a great deal of attention to this matter. We are trying to find some way—I cannot guarantee that it will be easy—to provide some kind of help for small businesses. A number of proposals have been sent to us from many quarters. I hope that the House will co-operate in this matter, too. We have been looking, for example, at the question of differential interest rates, and so on. It is an extremely difficult matter, but we are trying to find a way of helping small businesses.
They get help on exports. Some of them are remarkably sucessful and get the fullest possible help. I think that the whole House would wish us to do more if we could find a way of doing it which could not be abused.

PRIME MINISTER (VISITS)

Mr. David Steel: asked the Prime Minister how many visits he has made to Scotland in the last 12 months.

The Prime Minister: I have visited Scotland on six occasions in the last year, Sir.

Mr. Steel: The Prime Minister will recall that a fortnight ago he disparaged my initial reactions to the White Paper on devolution. Does he accept that every newspaper in Scotland, whatever its political viewpoint, has fundamentally criticised the White Paper? Will he now enter into detailed—[HON. MEMBERS: "The Daily Record".] I said every newspaper in Scotland, regardless of its political viewpoint. I am not aware that the Daily Record is a Tory newspaper. Every newspaper in Scotland, regardless of its political standpoint, has criticised the White Paper. Will the Prime Minister now enter into serious discussions between the parties before publication of the Bill on how best to improve the White Paper?

The Prime Minister: The House, as I do, always takes full account of the advice that we get from newspapers, whether north or south of the border. These important constitutional issues are for right hon. and hon. Members elected to this House to decide in the last resort. My right hon. Friends and I have answered a number of questions on this matter.
I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman was a little nettled by what I said in answer to a previous Question. I think I used the word "squalor"—I agree that it was a bit rough—about the fact that, not for the first time, the Liberals voted with the Conservatives. I am still looking at this Christmastide for an appropriate word to describe what we read in the Press this morning—namely, that the Liberal Party Whips, the Scottish National Party Whips, and all the rest are meeting the Tory Whips. God help them.

Mr. Radice: asked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to Sweden.

The Prime Minister: I did so last July, but I have at present no plans for a further visit. I met the Swedish Foreign Minister here last week.

Mr. Radice: When my right hon Friend visits Sweden, will he examine how the Swedes have managed, under


successive Labour Governments, to combine a high and rising level of public expenditure with an expanding economy? Does he agree that we have much to learn from Swedish labour market policies, particularly in training and retraining, and that shortages and ineffective deployment of skilled manpower remain among the chief obstacles in the way of successfully expanding the British economy?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I believe that the Swedes lead Europe on the subject of retraining. I have had the opportunity of discussing the matter many times with Prime Minister Erlander and Prime Minister Palme. The Swedes provide far more resources and facilities for training than almost any other country. The importance that we attach to this area is shown by the fact that, despite present constraints on public expenditure and demands from other people that we should cut public expenditure to ribbons, we have made extra funds available to the Manpower Services Commission for training and retraining no fewer than three times this year, making a total of about £ 70 million. I agree that that is nothing like what the Swedes do, but it is very important in assisting training. It is providing about 45,000 additional training places, over three-quarters of them for young people.

Mr. Maurice Macmillan: Will the Prime Minister consider that the happy situation which his hon. Friend described might have something to do with the fact that the marginal rate of taxation of income and wealth tax combined in Sweden is lower than the marginal rate of taxation on incomes alone in this country?

The Prime Minister: I welcome that intervention. Sitting as he does below the Gangway, the right hon. Gentleman may tell the House something which his Front Bench has not told us—which expenditure the Conservatives would cut in order to cut taxation.

SEEMA BHOLA (ADMISSION TO HOSPITAL)

Mr. Shersby: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if she will make a statement on the

circumstances in which Seema Bhola was refused admission to Hillingdon Hospital and subsequently died following eventual admission to Wexham Park Hospital, Slough.

The Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Dr. David Owen): I am sure I speak for the whole House when I express my deep sympathy with the parents of Seema Bhola in their tragic loss.
I have made urgent inquiries as to the circumstances of her death. The first approach to the National Health Service was an emergency call from the police for an ambulance at two minutes past seven on Tuesday evening. The ambulance left within a minute and arrived at the patient's home at seven minutes past seven, which was within five minutes of receiving the call. At that time the police were already giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which was then continued by the ambulance staff.
It was known that the accident and emergency departments at Hillingdon Hospital and at Mount Vernon Hospital were closed to ambulance cases, but the ambulance officers also knew that some emergency cases arriving at the door were being seen at Mount Vernon Hospital.
The ambulance drivers were informed that no doctor was available at Mount Vernon Hospital after they had gone one mile, but as they were then passing Hillingdon Hospital they turned into the hospital but were then redirected by the ambulance control to Wexham Park Hospital. On arrival, at 33 minutes past seven, Seema Bhola was then seen by a casualty officer and found to be dead. The exact time of death is uncertain.
An opening inquest will take place tomorrow at High Wycombe, and the coroner has decided to hold a full inquest at a date yet to be determined.
Some of the reports suggest a conflict of evidence, and I have therefore asked for an immediate report from the Hillingdon Area Health Authority, and I shall then consider whether to hold a formal inquiry.

Mr. Shersby: I should like to associate myself with the Minister in expressing deep sympathy with the parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bhola, on the loss of their young child.
Does the Secretary of State realise that in the eyes of my constituents and millions of decent people it is her responsibility—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—I repeat, it is her responsibility to see that patients can gain immediate admission to hospital in an emergency? Does the Minister realise that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute with the doctors, it is the Secretary of State's duty to ensure—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—that the hospitals are open night and day? Does not the Secretary of State agree that the time has come to resolve the unhappy dispute with the doctors so that my constituents can gain admission to hospital when they need urgent treatment?

Hon. Members: Disgraceful.

Dr. Owen: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State expresses her deep sympathy. The reason she cannot be here to answer the Question is that she is preparing to see the junior hospital doctors at just about this moment in a further attempt to resolve the dispute.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will carefully consider whether he should withdraw what he said. Under the perfectly normal procedure of the House, to bring to the attention of the House concern about a constituent's case, concern which we all share, the hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity to make a serious allegation against my right hon. Friend. At a time when the whole House wants a resolution of the dispute, he has personalised the attack in a political and—as I think most people outside the House will feel—a disgraceful way. I make this plea to the hon. Gentleman in all sincerity. It will not help the atmosphere, either in the resolution of the wider dispute in the country or in dealing with the tragic circumstances of the death of this child, if personalised attacks of that sort are made. I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw that allegation.

Mr. Shersby: With your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister one supplementary question.

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I had serious doubts whether I should allow this Question. I thought it right to allow it so that we could possibly ascertain the facts, in the chance that by ascertaining the

facts in this case a similar tragedy might be avoided. I had no intention of allowing it to become an argument on the merits of the doctors' dispute.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Mrs. Thatcher—Business question.

Mr. Pardoe: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Without dissenting from your ruling, may I point out that you have now allowed one question from one side of the House which gives a totally false and damnable impression of what hon. Members think about this case? [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: I ask the House to calm down. I have allowed the Minister to speak extremely frankly. It is not a matter of one side or another. The Minister said exactly what he thought. I have been perfectly fair. If the hon. Gentleman would use that kind of epithet about me, he must do it by motion.

Dr. M. S. Miller: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you have allowed an hon. Member to make a personal attack on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, and have not permitted an expression of view from this side of the House, I believe that you should allow an hon. Member on the Labour Benches to put a point of view which contradicts that advanced by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby).

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the House will calm down. I allowed the Minister to express his view very firmly. He has done so in no uncertain terms. I have been perfectly fair.

Mr. Heffer: On a further point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby), if I can call him the hon. Member, made a statement to the effect that my right hon. Friend is responsible for the death of a child—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I listened carefully, and the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) did not say that. However, he brought in the whole question of the hospital dispute. He did not make the direct suggestion that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer)


claims. I would not have allowed him to do so.

Mr. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman said that the responsibility for this situation rested on my right hon. Friend. I am certain that any hon. Member who thinks about the matter will not accept that proposition. I ask the Leader of the Opposition to make a statement dissociating herself from the standards and shameful remarks of her hon. Friend. If she does not—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: I hope that the House will calm down. It is a difficult problem for the Chair to know when to allow a Private Notice Question. In this instance I considered it proper to do so as I thought that some facts might be brought out which might obviate a similar tragic event. I allowed the hon. Member for Uxbridge to ask a supplementary question and there was a robust reply from the Minister. I think that the House would be much wiser to move on to the business questions.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mrs. Thatcher: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): The business for next week will be as follows:—
MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER—Debate on the Rate Support Grant Orders.
TUESDAY 16TH DECEMBER—Supply [3rd Allotted Day], when the House will be asked to pass outstanding Votes.
Debate on the motor vehicle industry.
Motion to approve paragraph 9 of the First Report from the Committee of Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 22), relating to the exclusion from the precincts of Mr. Knight and Mr. Schreiber.
WEDNESDAY 17TH DECEMBER—Debate on employment and on measures for saving jobs.
Motions on the Hill Livestock (Compensatory Allowances) Regulations, on the Winter Keep (Scotland) (Revocation) Scheme, and on the Weights and

Measures Act 1963 (Biscuits and Shortbread) Order.
THURSDAY 18TH DECEMBER—Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund Bill.
FRIDAY 19TH DECEMBER—It will be proposed that the House should rise for the Christmas Adjournment, until Monday 12th January 1976.

Mrs. Thatcher: If we are to have a debate on the motor vehicle industry on Tuesday, may we expect a statement on the Chrysler position tomorrow and not later than tomorrow? May we also expect publication of the CPRS Report before the debate, the report having being promised by the beginning of November? Does the right hon. Gentleman recollect or has he read that last week his right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury mentioned that there would be a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in good time before the debate on unemployment? May we expect that statement on Monday?

Mr. Short: Negotiations are continuing on the Chrysler position. My right hon. Friend has had a further meeting with Mr. Riccardo and his colleagues this morning. A statement will be made to the House as soon as possible, and, hopefully, early next week. I shall consider the point that the right hon. Lady has made about the CPRS Report. I shall see whether it is possible to publish the report before the debate.
Regarding the measures that I announced for the debate on Wednesday, the Chancellor does not have it in mind to make a statement before the debate. I have considered the precedents during the previous Conservative Government's term of office, and there are many precedents for not doing so. In view of the content of the Chancellor's measures, I do not think it would be appropriate for him to make a statement before the debate.

Mrs. Thatcher: It looks as though we are not to get the Chrysler statement before we are expected to debate the whole motor vehicle industry. Many of us would have expected to have it well before the debate. Further, we would not expect to be denied the information contained in the CPRS Report. We are well aware that a complicated and difficult decision has to be made about Chrysler, but that


makes it essential for the House to be informed as well as the Minister.

Mr. Short: I agree with the right hon. Lady, and if it is possible to make a statement tomorrow I shall see that it is made. Clearly we cannot make a statement before we have reached a solution. The statement will be made as soon as possible. As regards the CPRS Report, I shall see whether it is possible to make it available before the debate. I shall do my best about that.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I ask for the help of the House. My efforts to curtail the last item of business were not altogether successful. I must inform the House that nearly 40 right hon. and hon. Members want to speak in the debate on the death penalty. I hope that hon. Members will ask brief questions about the business of the House.

Mr. Burden: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will the Leader of the House make a statement as soon as possible about what has happened in Icelandic waters—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I call the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield).

Mr. Les Huckfield: Does my right hon. Friend accept that many of my hon. Friends recognise the urgent need for a statement to be made on Chrysler as soon as possible, but take the view that it is far too important a statement to be made on a Friday? Does he recognise that many of us would appreciate a statement on this most important matter as early as possible before the debate on the motor industry?

Mr. Short: I promise that the statement will be made at the earliest possible moment. The House will be sitting tomorrow and it is a working day. I realise that many hon. Members visit their constituencies, but I think that the House is entitled to have this information at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. Buck: Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that we have a statement during the course of the day about what happened this morning in Icelandic waters? It appears that the Icelandic "Thor" has opened fire, has been holed and is hove to. It seems that assistance has been offered to her by our craft.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is appropriate for the House to have the opportunity to be told precisely what has happened in the short term? In the long term, may we expect an opportunity to debate the whole matter? What Iceland is doing is totally indefensible since we are prepared to negotiate on the whole matter.

Mr. Short: I understand the concern of the House on this matter. I shall pass on urgently to my right hon. Friend what the hon. and learned Gentleman and the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) have said. I cannot offer any time for a debate before Christmas. I think that the only opportunity before Christmas will be the Adjournment debate.

Mr. Richard Wainwright: So that hon. Members may make meaningful contributions to the debate on the motor vehicle industry next week, will the right hon. Gentleman arrange to make available the CPRS Report and also the Government's reply to the Report of the Expenditure Committee on the motor vehicle industry, for which we have already waited many weeks?

Mr. Short: I am afraid that I cannot promise that that document will be available for the debate, but I shall try to see whether it is possible to make the CPRS Report available to the House.

Mr. James Johnson: May I inform my right hon. Friend that I support the plea made by the hon. and learned Member for Colchester (Mr. Buck) about the serious occurrence off Iceland? I have not heard the details, but, if the hon. and learned Gentleman is correct, it is a terrible business if shots have been fired in Icelandic waters. We should like to have a statement as quickly as possible.

Mr. Short: I understand my hon. Friend's concern. I shall start work on that matter as soon as business questions have been concluded to see what can be done.

Mr. Peter Walker: The Leader of the House said that he will try to make available the CPRS Report. Whatever the difficulties, there is no reason why he should not make a copy available in the Library.

Mr. Short: I have said that I shall look at the matter and do the best I can.

Mr. Kilfedder: I know that the right hon. Gentleman appreciates the importance of an early debate on the report relating to the Northern Ireland Convention. Will he ensure that the debate will take place in the first week after the House returns from the Christmas Recess so that we may avoid a political vacuum in Northern Ireland?

Mr. Short: I appreciate the need on that score, and there will be a debate on Northern Ireland very soon after we return. I cannot absolutely guarantee that debate in the first week when we return after Christmas, but I shall do my best to arrange a debate as soon as possible.

Mr. Lipton: My right hon. Friend said that at the end of business next Tuesday the House will debate the Report of the Committee of Privileges. May we have an assurance that adequate time will be afforded and that the rule will be suspended if necessary?

Mr. Short: The rule will be suspended, and the House will note that I tabled only one point for debate. I felt that it would be unfair that the matter should hang over the heads of the two journalists concerned during the Christmas Recess. The other point involving Privilege raises much wider issues. I am sure that the Government and the whole House will wish to have more time to think about the matter.

Mr. du Cann: Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why the previous arrangements for business were cancelled and why there will not now be a debate before Christmas on the five Reports of the Public Accounts Committee? Does he not agree that it is unsatisfactory that discussion of Reports made by the senior Select Committee of the House should be delayed in this way, particularly when they constitute the only audit available to the House on Government expenditure and perhaps its only potential check? Will he further agree that it is the Government's duty to support the work of Members in this House in this regard if the Government believe that the work is as valuable to the House as it used to be when the Prime Minister was its distinguished Chairman?

Mr. Short: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of the Public Accounts Committee. As he knows, it was intended to debate those Reports next week, but in view of the Chrysler debate, the debate on unemployment and the Chancellor of the Exchequer's package it has not been possible to find time for a debate. I shall find time for a debate as soon as possible after the recess.

Mr. Stonehouse: When does my right hon. Friend intend to table a motion for the Christmas adjournment?

Mr. Short: I think the best day for such a debate would be the day on which the House deals with the Consolidated Fund Bill—namely, Thursday of next week.

Mr. Peyton: On the subject of the debate on the motor industry, it will surely be difficult to hold that debate without the answer to the Expenditure Committee's Report and the CPRS Report. I believe I am right in saying that the Minister of State, Department of Industry is on record as saying that these documents would be available before any debate on the motor industry in this House. If the Government's view is that they cannot give the House an answer to the Expenditure Committee's Report before the Chrysler situation has been settled, is not this tantamount to saying that more money for Chrysler will mean less money for Leyland? Is that not the unfortunate result?
Secondly, does the right hon. Gentleman remember his promise given a fortnight ago that the Government would make a statement on the National Enterprise Board? The Patronage Secretary appeared last week to go a little beyond that statement.

Mr. Short: If I may deal with the second point first, I undertook to make a statement. I shall do so next week. I am looking carefully into the matter. I am examining our practice in regard to the nationalised industries and about setting up the Board. It has taken a rather long time and I apologise, but I hope I shall make a statement to the House before the House rises.
In regard to the right hon. Gentleman's first point about the CPRS Report, I shall do my best to see that it is made available if that is at all possible. I can


give no undertaking about any Government reply to the Report. There will be the usual opportunities, subject to the agreement of the chairman, to debate this matter in due course. However, I shall examine the whole question in response to what the right hon. Gentleman said.

Mr. Hoyle: Will my right hon. Friend make a statement about import controls—a matter that is of great concern to many hon. Members—before the House debates the employment situation?

Mr. Short: Yes, Sir. There will be a statement on import controls next week either before the statement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer or, much more likely, in his speech in the debate.

Mr. Biffen: In view of the importance of Tuesday's debate, is it not imperative that the Report of the Central Policy Review Staff should be made available to this House? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it will be the final mockery if we have to turn to the Sunday Times to find the information?

Mr. Buchan: On the subject of the Chrysler situation, we recognise that Friday is a working day in two senses since almost every hon. Member has to be in his constituency. Therefore, if a statement on Chrysler is made tomorrow, no doubt it will be made in the morning. Therefore, hon. Members would like to know whether that statement is to be made tomorrow. I hope that I shall have a reply on this point. If not, may I continue my question?
The problem we are facing is that presumably a decision either has or has not been made. If a decision has been made, will my right hon. Friend please guarantee to assure hon. Members, who are gravely concerned about the Chrysler situation and who may be visiting Chrysler factories tomorrow, that if a statement is to be made it will be made tomorrow? If the decision has not been made but the decision is reached tomorrow, will he consider informing us

at that point? May I please have a reply on that matter? Am I to receive a reply?

Mr. Short: I cannot answer my hon. Friend until he sits down. I am quite willing to answer. He put some very sensible points, and indeed human issues, concerning the way in which we carry out our business. I shall see whether it is possible to find some satisfactory way this evening of informing hon. Members whether there will be a statement tomorrow. I hope that the House will appreciate the difficulties. Negotiations are now taking place. They may go on until late tonight. A solution may be reached tonight or it may not. It may be reached tomorrow morning. If a settlement were reached early tomorrow morning, it would be wrong for the Government to withhold that information. It is a difficult situation, but I shall do my best to inform hon. Members tonight before they go away whether there will be a statement tomorrow.

Mr. Buchan: I thank my right hon. Friend.

Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether early in the Session in 1976 we may debate the Report of the Select Committee on Violence in Marriage?

Mr. Short: Many hon. Members are interested in that Report. I shall bear in mind the possibility of a general debate on that topic when time becomes available.

Mr. Roy Hughes: May the House have an early debate on the steel industry? To put the matter modestly and mildly, I must remind my right hon. Friend that the industry is in a truly deplorable state. In view of the fact that the British Steel Corporation is a publicly-owned concern with ultimate responsibility to this House, does the Leader of the House agree that there is some merit in meeting this suggestion?

Mr. Short: I recognise that the world recession is having a considerable effect on the steel industry. There will not be a debate next week, but sometime in the new year we shall have to debate the steel industry.

TERRORIST OFFENCES (PENALTY)

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: I beg to move,
That this House demands capital punishment for terrorist offences causing death.
Twelve months ago to the day this House, by a majority of 152, decided that it would be an uncivilised step or that it would provoke more terrorism if terrorist murderers were to suffer the death penalty. I have tabled this motion to give hon. Members an opportunity to reconsider that decision. I hope that hon. Members—Mr. Bernard Levin notwithstanding—will regard this debate as timely, bearing in mind the immense concern of public opinion throughout the country.
I make it clear to the House that this is a motion only, requiring a declaration in principle only. It would be for legislation in due course to work out whether, for example, capital punishment would apply in Northern Ireland, what is the best definition of "terrorism", whether the introduction of such a penalty could be temporary, or even the method of execution. I hope that it will not be assumed by any hon. Members that a vote for the motion is necessarily a vote for death by hanging.
This is also a motion of the most limited and narrow kind. It is not for all murder, only terrorist murder. It does not cover injuries, however serious, as a result of a terrorist offence. By framing the motion in so narrow and restrictive a way, I hope to attract to my support a number of hon. Members who would not necessarily support capital punishment but who believe that an exception must be made for murders committed by terrorists.

Mr. Evelyn King: My hon. Friend dealt with a list of exclusions upon which I should like him to expand. He will realise that a great many terrorists are girls of 19 years. Is he in favour of execution for girls as well as men?

Mr. Lawrence: The answer to that question will become clear if I am allowed to develop my argument.
Put shortly, we should have capital punishment for these offences for three

reasons: first, because the more civilised so-called deterrent of life imprisonment has blatantly failed to deter a significant number of terrorists; second, because more innocent lives would be saved if we had the death penalty; and third, because this House cannot continue flaunting the wishes of the overwhelming majority of those whom we represent.
Before I give my reasons for holding these three views I shall say only two things. Divided as the House might be on means, we are all united upon certain ends. We all abominate terrorism, we are all determined that the terrorist shall not win and we all want to save lives. Some hon. Members on opposite sides may even agree, as I believe the Home Secretary was near to agreeing the other day, that there might be no objection to a terrorist forfeiting his life in some circumstances. Therefore, if I should express myself strongly in the course of my remarks, I hope it will not be taken as implying any disrespect towards those who hold a contrary view to mine.
I also hope that by advocating capital punishment it will not be thought that I enjoy doing so. It is a penalty that I find utterly nauseating and repugnant but no more so than the slaughter and carnage by which the terrorists destroy the lives of innocent people.
So to my argument. It is relevant to begin by reminding the House how we, in England, have fared since we decided that life imprisonment was no less a deterrent for terrorist murder than capital punishment. On the very day of our debate last year a bomb went off at the Naval and Military Club, Piccadilly, and one man was injured. On 17th December four people were injured by two bombs, one planted at the Draycott Avenue telephone exchange and the other at Chenies Street exchange. One person was injured and one was killed. The next day 17 were injured when two bombs went off in Bristol. The following day a 100lb. car bomb went off outside Selfridges and five people were injured. Two days later a bomb went off in Harrods injuring two and the next day an attempt was made upon the life of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath).
On 23rd January this year three people were injured at the waterworks at Walthamstow, and four days later 20 people


were injured in three blasts at Lewis's store in Manchester, at a jewellers in Kensington and at a boutique in Victoria. On the same day three bombs were defused. Here I pay tribute to the extraordinary courage of those men who defused those bombs. They were defused at Hampstead, Putney and Bond Street.
After a lull of seven months, anyone who believed that the terrorists had at last been deterred by the decision of this House had a rude awakening. A blast at a public house at Caterham injured 33 men and women. I keep saying "injured", as the cold statistics do, without explaining what sort of injuries were incurred. The people in that public house had their legs and arms blown off. These bombs usually also deafen and blind their victims. The day after the bomb blast at Caterham, six people were injured in Oxford Street. The following day a brave bomb disposal officer was blown to pieces trying to save the lives of others.
On 5th September 63 people were injured and two died when a bomb went off in the foyer of the Hilton Hotel. The following week two letter bombs injured their openers. A week later a bomb exploded at the Portman Hotel injuring three. On 25th September two people were injured in a public house at Maidstone. On 9th October 20 people were injured and one died when a bomb went off at Green Park underground station. On 13th October many were saved from destruction by yet another brave officer at Lockets Restaurant. That bomb was loaded with iron screws deliberately to cause hideous wounds.
Ten days later a bomb under the car of my right hon. Friend the Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser) killed an eminent physician and injured a passer-by. On 29th October, 18 people were injured while eating at a trattoria in Mount Street. Within a week three more were injured when another car was blown up in Connaught Square. On 9th November a bomb was defused outside the house of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sidcup. Three days later one person died and 15 were injured at Scott's Restaurant and six days later two people died and 23 were injured at Waltons Restaurant. Both bombs had been loaded with ball bearings.
Meanwhile a cache of explosives had been found in a block of flats in Southampton. I ask hon. Members to consider the possible implications of that. On 27th November Mr. Ross McWhirter, whom many of us remember today, was murdered on his own doorstep.
In all, since this House last voted that life imprisonment was the best we could do by way of a deterrent, there have been 30 bombs, 243 people injured and 10—by divine Providence only 10—people killed in England. The violence has got worse. The bombs now come without warning and have been planted more indiscriminately. They have been made more bestial in their nature and we have had the first doorstep assassination.
I have recited those horrible facts not so that hon. Members should be sickened, though they will be sickened, or to twist their minds in bitterness against the perpetrators so that they abandon their powers of judgment, but to remind hon. Members how great is the responsibility that we bear in this place if we do not take action to stop this bloodshed and also to prove the one unanswerable fact that life imprisonment has not turned out to be a deterrent. As one of the wives of an IRA bomber called out when her man was sentenced for the Guildford bombing, "It is all right, you will not serve your sentence". There is a widespread belief that when we are forced to withdraw our troops from Northern Ireland there will be an amnesty for political terrorists.
Therefore, could we have done any more? Can we still? Would capital punishment deter? The British people say that it would. The majority of this House may say that it will not. However, have hon. Members asked themselves by what superior knowledge they set themselves up as experts on the workings of the criminal mind'? This is not a complicated question. It is a question of simple motivation on which the ordinary man or woman is as expert as any Member of Parliament, or a senior police officer, come to that.
If hon. Members do not trust the judgment of the ordinary voter whose judgment returned them to this place, whose judgment should they trust? Who better than the IRA itself, the people we seek to deter? The IRA makes it quite clear that it considers capital punishment to be a


deterrent. Why else does it administer capital punishment as the ultimate sanction against those who break its code? Does it do it because it does not believe in it? Let us consider why O'Connell, the IRA leader, considered it necessary on the day we debated this subject about 12 months ago to threaten this House with the death of two British soldiers for every terrorist sentenced to death? Was that because he wanted us to vote for capital punishment? If he wanted us not to vote for it, why was that?
The answers are not difficult to give. The IRA leader knew that capital punishment would deter some of his supporters—not, of course, every fanatic, but those who provide the back-up, those who make the bombs, steal the detonators, drive the cars and harbour the perpetrators after their act of devastation. O'Connell knew that the security forces would get more information which would lead to the reduction of his force if the person concerned had as much to fear from the State as from the IRA. On this occasion, therefore, the common sense of the British people and the view of the IRA coincide. They believe that capital punishment would provide some deterrent to some people, and those views are quite good enough.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Will the hon. Member make clear whether the people he thinks might be deterred—those who are involved on the fringe of terrorist activities—will be subject to the death penalty for these activities? That is a crucial point in his argument.

Mr. Lawrence: The ordinary laws would apply. Those laws say that all those who are a party to a criminal act are as guilty of that act as the final perpetrator.
I ask everyone here whether in examining his conscience he can swear this afternoon that it is not possible for capital punishment to be a deterrent for some people in some circumstances. If he cannot swear that, he is admitting that capital punishment may be a deterrent for some. If so, it may save some lives, and if it may save some lives, which the alternative has clearly failed to do, are we not failing in our duty if we do not provide even that degree of protection for our people?
It is only part of my argument that lives will be saved by capital punishment. However, if I am right so far—and I noticed that even the anti-capital punishment leading article in The Times yesterday said that capital punishment would be a deterrent—then let us consider the arguments of hon. Members who are opposed to it. How do they show that more lives would be lost with capital punishment than would be saved by its deterrent aspect? They say, as I understand it, that martyrs would be created to inspire more terrorists; hostages would be taken to secure the release of those awaiting death; there would be reprisals; juveniles would be used; more people would hide terrorists; juries would acquit more often; the public would not allow a 19-year-old girl to suffer the death penalty; capital punishment is uncivilised; and demand for it is vengeance and contrary to God's teaching.
I hope that I have introduced all the arguments which will be arraigned against my case. I concede that some of them have some substance, but I contend that none of them has much substance. If I am told that God's teaching is to be found in the Bible and that it is against capital punishment, I answer that it depends on which page of the Bible one is looking at. If I am told, as the Archbishops said in their letter to The Times yesterday, that judgment should be left to God, I reply that since the Almighty has not seen fit to stop the blood-letting and the carnage of years of terrorism He must be leaving that particular judgment to us.
If I am told that capital punishment is an uncivilised punishment, I agree, but we are living in an uncivilised society where the civilised punishment of life imprisonment has been tried and has failed to deter. Now we must try something less civilised. I say that we shall not enjoy the luxury of a civilised society until we get rid of terrorism, and the best way of doing that is to get rid of the terrorists.
If those who speak for the death penalty are accused of being after vengeance, I say that for some of us that may be true and that for others it may not. Even if it were true, however, is it not better to institutionalise our feelings of vengeance and for the State to be vengeful on


our behalf, after due and proper judicial process with all its built-in safeguards against conviction of the innocent, than that we should wreak our vengeance, to quote the Economist of last week,
in prison cells, resisting arrest, or down dark streets on substitute victims by a society frustrated at what it sees to be the law's inadequacy"?
Would friends and relatives be more likely to hide a terrorist? More likely than what? More likely than now when, under the stern regime of life imprisonment, hardly anyone is caught in England for want of a harbour? Would more juries acquit? That might be possible sometimes, but would hon. Members want juries not to acquit where they had doubt as to guilt? Have hon. Members stopped trusting juries? Even an unjustified acquittal to avoid the death penalty would not necessarily mean the release of the prisoner. It would almost certainly be open to the jury to convict of murder without terrorism, or of manslaughter if it were thought that the accused was guilty but should not suffer death. What of the situation of 19-year-old girls? A sympathetic jury might ensure that such a girl received a long prison sentence even if it did not want her to die. However, there are some girls of 19 years and 20 years whose crimes are so hideous that juries would want them removed from this existence.
Would juveniles be used more often? That is possible, but that is only speculation. The juvenile would not die from capital punishment as a result of this motion being passed, and subsequent legislation would, of course, ensure that according to the ordinary rules of the law of the land the juvenile would not suffer the death penalty. The terrorists would soon stop using juveniles to do their dirty work when the work began to be bungled and the children brought the police—and the death penalty—very quickly to their door.
What of the more practical objections based on arguments about martyrdom, and the taking of hostages and reprisals? Before the will of the people is overridden, surely opponents of capital punishment have at the very least to show that martyrdom is likely to make more terrorists than would be deterred by the death penalty. I do not believe that they can

show that. [HON. MEMBERS: "Show the opposite."] Those who rely on this argument cannot use the argument about the extended use of juveniles as well. If terrorists want to gain support through execution, they will not hide behind juveniles. Nor can it be argued that martyrdom does not already exist for those who languish in prison.
It is not only death that creates martyrs. Life imprisonment does the same, but with an added feature. Martyrdom of the dead is largely a question of anniversarial celebration, while martyrdom of the prisoner is continuous. Above all, is not the martyrdom argument a cruel misjudgment of the Irish people? It presupposes that they are behind the terrorists and would make martyrs of them. Am I not right in saying that the Irish community in the United Kingdom and in southern Ireland despises the terrorists as much as we do? It is one thing to be fighting in the cause of independence with the mass of the people behind you, but the chances of martyrdom are much reduced when the people are against you. After the pageantry of the funeral, how many who have died in the cause of the IRA in recent years are now remembered?
The situation is similar over hostages. Do not the opponents of capital punishment have to show that more hostages will be taken and that there will be more death or injury caused by the death penalty than would be deterred by it? Again, those who rely on the hostages argument cannot at the same time use the martyrdom argument. If the terrorist wishes martyrdom he is unlikely to take hostages to ensure his release. The taking of hostages by hijacking airliners has in recent times been to release people from imprisonment. Capital punishment will reduce the opportunities for taking hostages since kidnapping to release a terrorist is a waste of time after the terrorist is dead.

Mr. Tom Litterick: The hon. Member has raised the point three times, but he seems unable to understand the important factor about martyrdom. The dead do not make themselves martyrs. It is posterity that makes martyrs of the dead. That is the psychology of martyrdom.

Mr. Lawrence: In other words, the person who dies has to have the support


the people behind him. My point, as the hon. Member would have heard if he had been listening, was that the Irish people are not, now that the fight for independence is over, behind these traitors who murder people.
I was approaching the question of reprisals. Of course, any terrorists who are left after capital punishment has been used may exact reprisals, but it will be easy to tag every killing as a reprisal even though it is not. The House will remember that the murder of Ross McWhirter was claimed to be a reprisal—not against capital punishment but against the treatment of IRA prisoners in a Northern Ireland prison.
Who is to say whether more will die because of reprisals or because we have given way to the terrorists—that he, the terrorist, seeing our fear and our weakness, will not redouble his murderous efforts? For we should make no mistake—if the terrorist believes that we are frightened of his threat of reprisals into not introducing capital punishment, he will have gained a victory, whatever excuses we may use to explain why we did it. If we allow the law-breaker to dictate our laws instead of the law-maker, is not that the beginning of the end? Will not every extreme group in Britain start trying to do the same thing? Will not terrorism spread? And will our cowardice then avail us?
On the question of martyrdom, hostages and reprisals, I can only conclude that there is a real chance that our failure to take this action will in the end escalate the violence, the killing and the terrorism. Certainly, those opposed to capital punishment have not yet made out any case that more lives would be lost by having capital punishment than would be saved by its deterrent aspect.
I said at the beginning that the failure of the soft option and my belief that capital punishment was a deterrent were not my only reasons for asking hon. Members to join me in the Aye Lobby, My third main reason both strengthens my belief that terrorism would be reduced and gives me my greatest reason for concern if this motion is not carried. I believe, quite simply, that it is now becoming dangerous for Parliament to ignore the demands for capital punishment being made by an

overwhelming majority of the British people. Eleven days ago, a public opinion poll gave the figure of 88 per cent. of our people supporting this motion. The strength of feeling will be well known to hon. Members from the post that we have all received.
I know all about Burke's principle that we are representatives and not delegates, that we are here to give our independent judgment, and I will make no party political point about that. But Burke would have been the first to say that we should not ignore public opinion. He would be the first to say that our judgment should be made taking public opinion into consideration. When public opinion is so considerable, should we not take considerable account of that opinion, especially when it is as informed as ours and especially when the public are as much in jeopardy as we are?
I do not see that it matters very much whether the public have this opinion partly because they desire vengeance or partly because they think that a unique crime should be marked by a unique penalty—or because they believe that we are fighting a battle with the IRA with one hand, or with both our hands, tied behind our backs. If they also believe that society will be safer if we have capital punishment, that is the important matter.
What worries me is the likely consequences of our refusal to introduce it. It should also worry hon. Members who believe that the violence will only escalate if we have capital punishment. Let me read to hon. Members a typical letter that I have received in my post:
As the Law does not protect me, my Family or my House, I will have to depend upon myself, and will do so. In my House, I have a deterrent and will not hesitate to use it. I now depend upon myself.
Do hon. Members really not see here a most serious threat to our society?
Is it not at least likely that an increasing number of our people will come to share, if they do not already, the view that Parliament is irrelevant, that our laws are irrelevant and that they need not be obeyed? Is it not at least probable that more people, in their immense frustration, might resort to self-help and that with self-help will come greater lawlessness, retaliation, reprisals and, I am afraid, quite possibly, counter-terrorism?

Mr. Brian Walden: May I suggest to the hon. Member that Burke might have said something else? He might have said that someone who intended to take the law into his own hands was not a "typical" British person and he might have suggested that no Member of Parliament should quote him in such a way as to appear in any sense to give countenance to such rubbish.

Mr. Lawrence: Burke might have said anything that the hon. Member supposes him to have said. All that I am doing is repeating the argument which is commonly put, that we are here as representatives, using our own judgment. That is an argument which I recall the hon. Member himself using when he saw fit to quote Burke in the similar debate this time last year. But what I am saying is that if people, in their immense frustration, are going to resort to this sort of retaliation, reprisal or counterterrorism—if that is even a possibility—we should do something about it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Scaremongering."] Before hon. Members start shouting about "scaremongering" and saying that it is "ridiculous", I hope that they will pause to remember precisely what happened in Northern Ireland—a part of this country.
Do hon. Members not remember that, for a long period at the start of the current Irish troubles, there was no violent reaction from the Protestant Loyalists but that, when time and experience had led them to believe that the forces of law and order were no longer adequate protection for them, some of them took to the gun and there was an escalation of violence and terrorism? Can any hon. Gentleman deny that?
The very thing which happened in that part of the United Kingdom, albeit on a much less moderate scale—I have read that letter to show some indication that it could happen—could even begin to happen here.
It is my belief that Parliament and the people have far more to fear from saying "No" to capital punishment for terrorist offences causing death than they have from agreeing to this motion. It is because I believe that and because the British people believe it that I have moved the motion.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I should announce that I have not selected either of the amendments.

4.28 p.m.

Mr. John P. Mackintosh: I begin by saying that I have some sympathy with the speech of the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) in the sense that I sympathise with the depth of his detestation of these offences and of the crimes which have been committed.
I had thought that, after seeing politics degenerate in the way they have in British and Irish public life over the last decade, there was little left that could shake me until I heard of the death of Ross McWhirter. What shook me even more was that, at a function that evening. I was talking about the killing to a reasonable member of the community. That person then said "It was awful, but, after all, we must remember that Ross McWhirter had stuck his neck out a bit." Is that not appalling? Is that not shocking? Is it not disgraceful that people could take into consideration the views that a person had in judging whether or not they condoned his being gunned down in cold blood? In that sense, therefore, I share, as I think does every hon. Member, the deep horror of the hon. Member for Burton at what has happened.
I also have some sympathy with the hon. Member, because a year ago, when we debated this same matter, I confess—an unusual thing for a Member of Parliament—that I came into the House in some doubt about how I was going to vote. I believe genuinely in all the old arguments for the abolition of the death penalty for what might be called civilian murder, but I also believed that they did not apply to the new situation in which we were placed, that those arguments did not apply directly to terrorism and that this was a new situation.
For this reason, I take some of the arguments of the hon. Member for Burton. I take, for example, the point about the sanctity of life. We are in a war situation. We are dealing with people who are trying to overthrow our Government and to change the direction of that Government by the use of sheer terror and force.
Secondly, I believe that the deterrence argument is overdone by the abolitionists. I know it is true that there is no direct correlation between those countries which have and those which do not have the death penalty and the murder rates in those countries. But it must also be agreed that in certain cases people are deterred by this fear. If that were not the case, why would the IRA consider shooting people suspected of informing, and why would the IRA make it clear to people committing outrages "Do not worry. If you are caught, it means just imprisonment. Then there will be a political settlement and you will be released, so that it will be over very soon"? Those are arguments to which I give considerable importance, though I do not take them as far as the hon. Member for Burton.
Then I accept some of the hon. Member's final points. If there is a great weight of opinion in this country in favour of any proposition, we need not follow it if we do not believe it to be in the national interest. But we must pay great attention to it, and we in this House must think carefully before we reject an opinion which is widely spread outside.
Having covered the points on which I agreed, in part, with the hon. Member, I turn to the substance of the matter. As I said just now, I came into this House a year ago in some doubt. I made up my mind finally when I heard the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Mr. Walden), in whose constituency one of the foulest outrages took place, and when I heard the speech of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. Ever since, when I have thought about it, I have come more and more to the conclusion not that the death penalty was inherently wrong but that as a practical matter it would not help us to diminish IRA outrages. This is a question for everyone's judgment, but I put it to the House that I am treating this solely as an empirical, practical question: would capital punishment increase or diminish the chances of defeating these people who are attacking our society in this way? I have come to the conclusion that it would diminish our chances.
I want now to rehearse the arguments which have led me to that conclusion.

First, there are arguments of practical detail. On this issue I disagree with the hon. Member for Burton. The practical detail matters in this case. It is while the detail is going on, while attention and publicity are focused on the case, that the miserable argument goes on: was the accused—perhaps a woman—a teenager or an adult; had she full knowledge of what she was doing? It is while that is happening that public opinion forms around a case.
So I put some of the difficulties. The first is the practical question that we are proposing by this motion the introduction of the death penalty for one category of offences only—terrorist offences. How do we define them? I have tried various methods of definition. If we try to define them by the weapons used, do we suggest seriously that it would be permissible to hang someone for shooting Ross McWhirter but that if he had been stabbed to death it would have put the crime in a different category?
Can we define terrorism by the category of person attacked, confining it to the police or to some other special group? Again the answer is "No", because it is the general public whom we have to protect against these outrages.
Can we define it by motive? To take this wretched case of Ross McWhirter again, if that were the law all that the gunman would have had to do was to whip out Mr. McWhirter's wallet and say that his motive was theft. I know that the question of definition is not an insuperable argument, but it is a difficult one, and a member of the other place, a distinguished lawyer in the Conservative Party, said more or less that there would have to be two trials—by a jury to find the person guilty, and the other by a panel of judges to determine whether it was a terrorist offence.
In addition to the problem of definition, we have the agony of how to choose which persons should be put through this arraignment. Is it the person who plans the crime? Is it the courier who brings the explosive to his country? Is it the person who drives the get-away car? Is it the person—the juvenile or woman—who plants the bomb? Is it the person who gives shelter when the actual perpetrators are fleeing from their crime? I am not saying that these matters could not be overcome, but I am saying that


they would cause the kind of argument which would focus attention on the plight of the accused and not on the horror of the crime.
Then there is the question of wrongful condemnation, and it is not to be underestimated when we have rival groups involved such as the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, bearing in mind that so much of the material resulting in convictions comes from paid informers. Why should those in one section of an insurgent group attack another when they can shop them by giving the police false information? It is one thing to say that a person might be hanged in error after a lengthy civil trial, but if we hanged someone after a terrorist trial on what was found to be false information his martyrdom would know no bounds.
Then there is the problem of getting convictions. Who is to convict? It would have to be a unanimous verdict of a jury. Majority verdicts would disappear completely in such cases. In certain parts of the country, however, would juries be willing to come to a unanimous decision and face the terrorist gun afterwards? That is why no one can be convicted in Northern Ireland. That may be a bad argument but it is true. Opposition Members must ask themselves why it is impossible to bring in capital punishment for such offences in Northern Ireland. Who would provide the 12 jury men and women in Northern Ireland with police protection for the rest of their lives? That is the kind of practical question we have to consider.
I turn finally in this list of practical problems to the question of hostages, rescue operations and reprisals. Here I agree with the hon. Member for Burton. If we were in an intolerable situation with hostages and reprisals, nothing would be worse than to introduce this penalty and to be driven off it from fear of further terror. Yet that is the dilemma into which we would be placed.
I do not say that some of these difficulties could not, by themselves, be solved. Together, however, they produce a long-drawn-out agonised trial involving difficulty after difficulty during which public opinion would build up.

Mr. Daniel Awdry: The hon. Gentleman may misread the feeling of the British people. Is he suggesting

that it would be difficult to recruit juries to serve on these cases because they would be frightened to bring in a verdict?

Mr. Mackintosh: I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting that juries would be open to intimidation and pressure, as would witnesses, especially in areas connected with the minority community from whom this kind of criminal is likely to come. We have to consider that when looking at the total feasibility of the operation.

Rev. Ian Paisley: The facts of the situation in Northern Ireland are not as they have been made out to be by the hon. Gentleman. In the case of terrorist offences there are no jury trials.

Mr. Mackintosh: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making my point for me. When the Gardiner Commission looked at capital punishment in Northern Ireland, it found that of 97 organisations and witnesses giving evidence only two recommended capital punishment.
Having given some account of the difficulties and tensions which would accompany trials involving the capital sentence for terrorism, I turn to what I understood to be the core of the argument of the hon. Member for Burton. He said that life imprisonment or the present level of punishment did not deter. However, the problem is not as he put it. The problem is to show that capital punishment would deter further, and we cannot show that. It cannot be proved one way or the other.
I am sure that every hon. Member, deep down, is bothered about this problem. How is it that the IRA is able, year after year, to recruit young people into its ranks, not from the whole of the Irish community—the Irish community in Britain, that in the Republic or that in Northern Ireland—but from a select minority? How is it possible to recruit from this tiny minority? The second volume of Brendan Behan's autobiography shows how a lovable, attractive, able man, because of the grisly romanticism of the Irish past of bitter struggle, was willing to wrest a gun from the hands of a man standing in a cemetery commemorating the deaths of the Easter Rising martyrs and shoot, not at a British policeman or at any other Briton, but at an Irish policeman. Why was he prepared to do this? It was


because of this long myth of struggle against Britain and the romanticism which surrounds these struggles, a romanticism which allows these people to separate horror of the crimes they commit from the kind of people they are and the way they behave, and from the people who shelter them and the lives they lead.
If we are to defeat the IRA, our great task is to drive a wedge between that section of the community which supports it and the IRA itself. The one way to fail to do this would be have capital punishment and create a new generation of martyrs. If there was a time when the IRA and its supporters were standing low in public opinion, it is now—and that is all because of the bravery of one man, the Dutch industrialist, Dr. Herrema.
The bravery and courage of Dr. Herrema has meant that for once the hero's welcome went to the victim of this dreadful offence and not to its perpetrators. I was delighted that when the Coyle girl stood up in court and shouted about the treatment she had been receiving in prison, instead of the shouts of the usual claque of IRA supporters there was a cold silence. Why? It was because the whole Irish community remembered that she had kept that man blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back and his ears plugged in utter darkness for five days. What had she suffered to compare with what she inflicted upon that man? Because in this case the community remembered the outrage committed and did not sympathise with those who had committed it, the gap between terrorist and victim was there.
But if Dr. Herrema had died and the death penalty had been mandatory and there had been three to six weeks of slow, grisly progress towards the scaffold for the two wicked young criminals, at the end of the day it is they who would have been remembered. Songs about them would have been sung in Dublin pubs, ceremonies would have been taking place over their graves and the feeling that they were criminals would have been lost to sight. The whole process of appeal around these people's memory would have been built up, whereas now the one thing that remains with the Irish people is the disgraceful criminal behaviour in which Coyle and Gallagher had engaged. For

once, there will be no new incentive for misguided young Irish men and women to drift into the IRA.
That is how we must combat this form of terrorism. I shall not weary the House with other examples, but it will not have escaped hon. Members that, when the Spanish Government executed five terrorists for murdering policemen, the news of the executions went round the world. Very few people remembered that they had killed policemen and even fewer knew that in the following fortnight nine more policemen and three civilians died in reprisals.
For these reasons, on purely practical grounds, I believe that while capital punishment might deter some individuals it would do an enormous amount for the whole mythology of the small group of terrorists in the IRA.
I come now to the last of the arguments—the view of the House and the view of the outside public. No one has greater respect for this House and its procedures than I have. I believe strongly that we have to decide what is in the national interest. I believe that it not only would be wrong in itself but would be not in the national interest to bring in the death penalty by voting for it because of outside opinion. We simply have to explain to people why we believe in our consciences that they are wrong. If we are wrong, they can reject us. We must not allow gunmen to blow us away from opinions we hold. We owe our unpressurised opinion to the country. Let us act that way this afternoon.

4.45 p.m.

Mr. Ian Gilmour: The House will appreciate what the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Mr. Mackintosh) said about the murder of Mr. McWhirter. I am speaking for myself in this debate and not for the Opposition, and since many of my hon. Friends want to speak I hope that the House will forgive and welcome a certain telescoping of my argument.
I am well aware that what I have said in the past has been contrary to the views of most of the Conservative Party and most of the country, and I have reappraised them as is my duty. While many of my hon. Friends will disagree with some of the things I say, I hope that


it will be possible to narrow the area of difference between the supporters and the opposers of the motion, which was so vigorously moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence). I hope to put forward at least some propositions which may secure fairly general agreement.
For example, I hope we can all agree on each other's motives. Those who are against hanging do not regard those who disagree with them as excitable and irrational demagogues who are baying for blood. Equally, I hope those who are in favour of capital punishment do not regard their opponents as ineffective dilettantes whose objections to hanging are primarily aesthetic and who place the purity of their consciences above the security of the State.
We are united on objectives—that is, the curbing and elimination of terrorists, the security of the State against its enemies, and the protection of our citizens. As the hon. Member for Berwick and East Lothian said, there is general agreement that, while the old arguments against hanging are certainly relevant, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has pointed out, they no longer have anything like the force in themselves that they have had in the past.
There is almost universal admiration for the police and there is a widespread wish that everything should be done to help them in the fight against terrorists. We all agree that the police must not be hamstrung in their pursuit of terrorists and that their lives should not be additionally endangered by unnecessary restrictions on their ability to defend themselves. This is something the House may wish to consider fairly closely in the future. There is general agreement with the view expressed recently by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that the perpetrators of these atrocities have no claim upon the mercy of the State. While there is disagreement on whether it would be wise for the State to exact the supreme penalty, nobody disputes that it has the right to do so.
Finally there is the point of agreement, as both hon. Members have said, that the terrorists are not even murdering and maiming in a popular cause. Very few people even in Ireland want to see a 32-

county Marxist Socialist republic imposed by force and terror.
I briefly summarise the case for bringing back capital punishment. First, there is the powerful democratic argument upon which my hon. Friend rightly laid stress—that the overwhelming majority of our people want hanging brought back and that the House should be very chary of flouting that tremendous weight of opinion, particularly on a matter which intimately affects every person's safety.
Secondly, there is the firm belief that the death penalty would deter some terrorists. Thirdly, tere is the conviction passionately held by a great many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and many people outside, that the death penalty is somehow a symbol of our will to fight and resist terrorism, a symbol of our determination to deter terrorists, and that unless we use all means in our power we are craven and defeatist and deserve to lose.
The symbol argument has great attractions, but a symbolic action would have little value even as a symbol if it had the opposite effect of what was desired. Some say that capital punishment is right and that we must therefore accept any adverse consequences that it might bring. With respect to those who hold that view, however, I think that it is a faulty mode of reasoning. Before deciding on a course of action, it is right that we should try to assess the consequences, and our assessment of those consequences should surely affect the decision we finally take. It is not sensible to consider a decision separately from its likely consequences.
Against the symbol argument, there is what might be called the security argument. When I had anything to do with these maters, none of the leading soldiers or officials concerned with security was in favour of capital punishment. I have no reason to believe that that position has altered. Last year the Home Secretary told us that five of the six leading police men were opposed to capital punishment. Of course, the House will not abdicate its judgment in favour of that of the security forces. The House will make up its own mind. Nevertheless it is worthy of note that, on every other issue affecting the security of the State, most of my right hon. and hon. Friends would


give very careful attention and, indeed overriding priority to the apparent views of those in charge of security.
Generals have occasionally been reluctant to use the most modern weapons, but capital punishment certainly does not come into that category and—to quote the analogy of war which is often used in this debate—politicians would surely be rash to insist upon sending their army into battle with a weapon which, in the opinion of their own generals, was likely to do more harm to their own side than to the enemy.
What would be the likely consequences of bringing back hanging? My hon. Friend the Member for Burton conceded that it would be liable to have the effect of securing fewer convictions. I think it is generally accepted that juries are more reluctant to convict when death is the penalty. On the other hand, as my hon. Friend also said, some terrorists would be deterred. But regrettably, here and in the rest of the world, a very small number of urban terrorists can produce a great deal of violence. If some terrorists are deterred, others, as the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) said last month, will be stimulated.
My hon. Friend asked how we could demonstrate this. We can to some extent look at the precedents, which are not very encouraging. This is what Arthur Koestler said in his book "Promise and Fulfilment" referring to 1947:
On the 31st July, the bodies of two British sergeants were found hanging from a tree near Tel Aviv. They had been murdered by the Irgun.… This was a reprisal for the execution of the three terrorists captured after the Acre Jail attack.
In April, four terrorists were hanged…. The executions were followed by a new wave of assassination, bomb-throwing and mine-laying, which caused fourteen deaths within the next few days: on the scene of each attack the terrorists left a hangman's noose as their signature.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: Is my right hon. Friend suggesting that support in Ulster and in this country for the IRA's aims is as great as was the support for the Zionist aims in what is now Israel? If so, I believe that he is making a sad mistake, but it is on that that he is basing his argument.

Mr. Gilmour: I did not think I was doing anything of the sort. I was making

no judgment on the Palestine controversy. What I was saying was that, although capital punishment had been in existence all that time in Palestine, it had not previously been used. People were sentenced to death but no one had been executed. When it was used, the results were those I have quoted, and I believe them to be highly relevant.
There is a second precedent, which is much more recent, if I may be permitted another quotation
Whether it was right or wrong to execute the Spanish terrorists, subsequent events hardly bore out the case of bringing back the death penalty to deal with the situation in Britain. If shooting five people convicted of killing policemen was a deterrent, how do we explain the deaths of six more Spanish policement in the week that followed the executions?
The weakness of the 'deterrent' argument is that it assumes that terrorists are amenable to reason. If the justification for the death penalty is argued on the only other ground, retribution, its supporters must be ready to accept the cost. In this case, six more lives.
In fact, nine more Spanish policemen, not six, were murdered. That quotation is an extract from an article in the Police Review.
Of course, we cannot be certain that the same thing would happen here, but it seems to me in the highest degree probable that it would. I think we should be deluding ourselves if we did not expect the execution of a terrorist, either here or in Northern Ireland, to be preceded and followed by a marked increase in terrorist atrocities and reprisals. More soldiers and more policemen would be murdered.
Moreover, at present the IRA enjoys remarkably little popular support on either side of the Irish Channel. For the first time the IRA has put itself almost outside the Irish Republican position. What could be better calculated to revive sympathy and support for it on both sides of the Irish Channel and on both sides of the Atlantic than a succession of executions? The whole cycle of violence, repression, sympathy and support would be restarted, but with far greater intensity than before.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: Does my right hon. Friend think that there would have been widespread support for the Birmingham bombers? Would they have been regarded as martyrs if they had been hanged?

Mr. Gilmour: Not here, but I think possibly in Northern Ireland—and we are concerned with both situations. But the point is that they were not hanged and there has been no support for them at all. There would be a considerable danger of bringing back sympathy if capital punishment were reintroduced.
My hon. Friend the Member for Burton seemed to regard the question of Northern Ireland almost as a detail, but it is very much a matter of principle. Are the supporters of this motion in favour of extending hanging to Northern Ireland? If not, would it be defensible to bring back hanging for terrorism in all parts of the United Kingdom except the part where it is most prevalent? Would it be defensible to bring back hanging without a jury trial?
The arguments on both sides are formidable and the objectives of both sides are the same. Everybody has to make up his own mind, and nobody can be sure that he is right. I am against the restoration of capital punishment because I think that the security argument is even more important than the democratic argument. Because I believe that executions would produce more terrorism and murder rather than less, I shall vote against the motion tonight.

5.1 p.m.

Mr. Frank Tomney: It is not so much what we say in this Chamber that matters, but what happens outside after we have said it. Coming events have a way of casting their shadows before them, and the sum total of the arguments of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) was rather frightening. The effect of his argument was that terrorists are able to control the operation of justice and the quality of mercy. That is a frightening proposition. It would mean having a situation in which the operation of the ordinary judicial procedures would become uncontrollable. The right hon. Member's arguments are admitted. Executions would lead to further murders and terror would build on terror. What are we to do in this situation? People outside have a gut reaction to the problem, and 88 per cent. want an alleviation or and end to these problems through the return of the death penalty. They want some direction from Parliament about

what their future is to be if current events are to become the pattern of law and order in this country. The issue confronting us is: what kind of society are we to become as we slide further down the slope, away from reality and the processes of justice?
Life imprisonment can mean 10 years, 7 years, 5 years or whatever judges, parole boards and the Home Secretary want to make it. Formerly, we had a well-defined statute. This motion will do nothing; it means nothing. We decided in 1957—and we confirmed our decision in 1965—that the death penalty should go, and it has left this country for ever. We cannot resurrect the gallows and the operations of justice which require us to differentiate between capital murders and various terrorist murders. The people outside want to know what we in the legislature are going to do in this situation. Are we men of principle? If so, how far do our principles take us? Not long ago, Great Britain was responsible for the mandate in Cyprus. Mrs. Cutleigh, a Black Watch sergeant's wife, who was the mother of five children was shot down by a Cypriot terrorist. She was a non-combatant and was out shopping at the time. At least two hon. Members of this House, including one who is now a Minister, went on the rampage against the Black Watch when they went out the same night, as any full-blooded Scotsman would, and said: "Let's sort out some of these people." That was a gut reaction, and if we do not understand that we do not understand the people we represent.
I have been through the whole range of philosophers and trained my intellect to think out problems in the manner I want to think them out. If some of my hon. Friends find some amusement in that, they had better get up and say so. Twelve months to the day after I had voted in favour of the retention of the death penalty, three policemen were shot dead in my constituency. Hon. Members should have seen the letters that poured in by the thousand. The distinction between the operations of the legislature and the law courts and the fears of the public should be exercising our minds today.
Whatever the outcome of the quarrels between Irishmen—and they may take a long time to be resolved—the Irish


Catholic communities in Great Britain and in Ireland do not support terrorism. The pattern of acceptability, so often seen in the United States, is running through this country. When the first British soldier was shot in Northern Ireland, he was given a funeral with full honours, with the Union Jack draped over his coffin. As hundreds of soldiers die, they fade from the memory and their deaths become an accepted pattern.
The murder of Mr. Ross McWhirter was a doorstep assassination. It is one thing for people to be blown up for an idealistic cause like a unified Ireland, but quite another when someone knocks on a person's door and puts a pistol to his head. It was a poiltical assassination of a man who did what he thought was right to combat growing terrorism in this country. Where do we go from here? We cannot reinstitute the death penalty. As Omar Khayyam said:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on.
We hear our own Home Secretary, troubled by his conscience, saying that if a person were killed in the execution of a crime he would have no sympathy for him. What does that mean? Does it mean that we are to go back to the days of the Wild West, with people forming posses, or is it an open invitation for the public to do something on their own? That was a dangerous remark. The police must be seen to be the only operative authority for the protection of the public. The Home Secretary's statement left me slightly bewildered. Once we start on this road, we come to the situation existing in all the American homes I have visited when I have been there on lecture tours. When pressed, they all admit that somewhere in the house they have a gun. I do not want that to happen in England. It would be fatal for the British judicial system, which has been copied in many countries. I am sure that each one of us would like it to be used as a model throughout the world, but it will not be unless we recognise this danger.
We have to ensure that when a judge sentences a terrorist to imprisonment the sentence matches the criminal act. Imprisonment should be for a sufficiently long period to act as a deterrent. This matter should not be left to the Parole Board or the Home Secretary; it should

rest with the judges, whom no one can direct.
A former Home Secretary, Lord Soskice, who was greatly respected, said that after 10 years a man deteriorated. He thought that no sentence should be for more than 10 years, which means that a prisoner would be out of prison in seven years. That is much too short a period of imprisonment for a person who is guilty of the calculated killing of another citizen, for whatever cause.
Since 1957 the death penalty has disappeared from the legal framework of most countries. We never thought to see the day when there would be indiscriminate bombing of restaurants, and when shots would be fired from travelling motor cars. We never thought to see, on the television screen, pictures of a father carrying the coffin of his 5-year-old child murdered by a bullet. The bullet went astray, but the child was killed.
If the sanctity of life means anything, the House has to make sure that the sentence imposed matches the crime that is committed. We cannot reimpose the death sentence. It is difficult for me to say that, in view of my former opinions, but I am a realist. I realise that time moves on, and changes occur in every aspect of our lives. There is no going back from the all-embracing legislation that was enacted in 1957. We have to realise that our future will be more perilous.
I earnestly hope that the Minister of State will convince the Home Secretary of the strength of public feeling and ask him to realise that something must be done, perhaps in consultation with the Parole Board. [Interruption.] Did someone say I had changed my mind? Politics, as a science, is an ever-rolling ball. We cannot go back to sixteenth century arguments. Time moves on, and we have to take cognisance of legislation and its effect upon the public. We cannot go back to the days before we legislated to abolish the death penalty. I said that 12 months ago. We must recognise that there are forces that compel any politician to rethink his position. We could continue this debate indefinitely, bringing up the same old arguments, but some reassurance must be given to the public. The assurance that I find necessary is the one that I have stated.

5.15. p.m.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: The hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) referred to political realism, and I am sure that that strikes us all as being a most important consideration. I sometimes think that the general public have a greater feeling for political realism than do some right hon. and hon. Members. All we ask tonight is that the State should take back to itself the power of the penalty of death. Over the last few months we have seen a growth of terrorism throughout the world and inside our own society.
Some Labour Members have expatiated on the problem of the jury system in Ireland. The problem is that because of terrorism the jury is subject to sentence of death by the IRA. The public are baffled by statements that have been made by leading politicians from both sides of the House. They are baffled by bishops who pontificate while at the same time supporting terrorist movements through organisations such as the World Council of Churches. They are baffled by being told that they do not know as well as we do. Perhaps some right hon. and hon. Members have been baffled by the document which sets out 33 ways in which Members of Parliament can protect themselves, one of which is as follows:
Be sensitive to aspects of your public or business activities which may identify you with issues likely to evoke violent dissent.
I am told that that document comes from the police. That is why we must consider this subject within the simple term that power to award the penalty of death should be restored to the State.
Reference has been made to security aspects. The views of senior policemen, generals and other experts have been quoted. Every good general and every good policeman wishes to engage in a limited battle in which he is certain to be the victor. This decision is one not for the expert police or military adviser but for the House of Commons. It is essentially a political decision.
We must apply our minds to the authority of the State and the deterrent power of the penalty of death. The powers of the State have been widened by a series of Governments, until the Government now control 90 per cent. of some people's lives and 60 per cent. of

the economy. Never before has the power of the State been greater and never has the authority of the State been less. That is the fundamental fact which right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House must face.
Following the success of political terrorism, we are threatened by a growth of violence that manifests itself in ordinary criminality, and the random hostage is becoming as much a part of the burglary kit as a jemmy or cosh. We are witnessing the decline in the authority of the State, and at this point, for its arrest, it is essential for the State to have available the supreme penalty of death.
The question of the deterrent can be argued in many ways and in many directions. Anyone who examines his conscience must realise, as Dr. Johnson said, that nothing concentrates a man's mind more than the thought of being hanged.
I have had some experience both as one combating terrorism and one engaged in activities with so-called terrorists. Those persons were frightened not by the prison camp but by the fear of being shot out of hand.
I believe, therefore, that we should, as a House, address ourselves to these matters in the spirit of the great lawyer, Lord Denning, that such a penalty is not simply a deterrent but the statement of the total abhorrence of a community against an outrageous crime.

5.21 p.m.

Mrs. Helene Hayman: The House tonight is discussing matters of life and death, not only for convicted murderers but for ordinary citizens in this country. The lives and deaths of ordinary citizens matter infinitely more than the lives and deaths of convicted murderers. It is not an occasion for any of us to display our consciences or our principles in this Chamber. The House and the public demand our rational judgment as to what will best safeguard our citizens.
It is because we view the subject in that way that many of us in this House who have an abhorrence of detention without trial, an abhorrence of extending police powers in ways that in any other sense we would regard as being against civil liberties, an abhorrence of exclusion orders and many of the other things we have had to put up with in the wake of


terrorism, have supported those measures, despite our normal principles. We have done so because we thought that they would be effective in the fight against terrorism.
If I believed that supporting this motion and legislation to bring back the death penalty would really have made it less likely that the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser) would be subject to the attempt made on him—from which his neighbour died—or that young people in pubs in Birmingham would die while having an evening drink, or that people eating out in London would be subject to death and maiming, I, too, might put to one side my principles as an abolitionist and support the hon. Gentleman's motion.
I do not believe that that is the case and, not believing that to be the case, I think it would be wrong for any hon. Member to support a measure which, in my view, because of the arguments that I hope to put forward, would only increase the violence and decrease the chances of a peaceful settlement of the problems of Northern Ireland, which far pre-date the time when terrorism crossed the channel to enter this country.
None of us can ignore the Irish dimension to this problem. None of us can step aside from a consideration of the way it would be judged across the Irish Sea if we, in this House, chose to protect by the death penalty those, here, who are in danger from terrorism, when we are not able to protect people in Northern Ireland who are in far greater danger than any of us. We cannot dodge that issue, and we cannot countenance sentencing to death men and women who have not had the benefit of trial by jury.
When he moved the motion, the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) said that it was not possible to argue both that terrorists were bent on self-destruction, with "kamikaze" attitudes, and that they would use women, children, or other people less likely to be subject to the death penalty, in their operations. I am afraid that that is not so, because a vast spectrum of people of different temperaments, from the psychopath to the weak, to the romantic, to the child, is involved in the whole range of IRA activities.
We owe it to the House and the country to argue in a practical way—not in terms of theories or principles—what would happen if we reintroduced the death penalty.
It cannot seriously be argued that people who turn their homes into bomb factories, people who manufacture letter bombs, people who drive carloads of explosives and have seen their colleagues blown to death when carrying similar explosives, people who go into the West End of London to shoot, knowing that the police are armed to shoot back against them, and who run these risks of death in their activities, would actually be deterred by the introduction of another risk—death by the noose—at the end of a long-drawn-out trial.
Those people will always be there as the fodder for terrorist activities. As for the others—the ones who, we are told, have some cowardice in their souls, and are willing to manipulate and to exploit—unfortunately, the streets of Belfast and Londonderry produce too many unhappy, disturbed children who are too easily turned into the couriers and perpetrators of terrorist crimes.
We cannot ignore the necessity of following through the logic of what has been said in the argument for bringing back the death penalty. If we did so, I believe that it would actually harm the cause of protecting public safety in this country and bringing peace to Northern Ireland. It would make it more difficult for the security forces and the police to get information. It would make it more difficult to get convictions.
This is not, as the hon. Gentleman seemed to think, because juries have doubts; it is because juries have a revulsion against sentencing to death the people who are before them. [Interruption.] Hon. Members may jeer, but they came very loudly to the defence of those who said that there should not be a narrow definition of the terrorist who would be subject to the death penalty, and that it should apply to everyone involved in the terrorist activity. I see that hon. Members are nodding in agreement with me.
That word "everyone" includes the 19-year-old who got the car on the way. It includes the mother of the terrorist who took him in on the night after the incident knowing what he had done. When people of this kind are put on trial,


however certain the jury may be they will not convict, knowing that the result will be the death of these people.
In those circumstances, if we introduce the death penalty we are making more difficult and not less difficult the jobs of the people in the front line, who have the primary responsibility for security.

Mr. John Gorst: As someone with absolutely no idea how he will vote until he has heard all the arguments, may I put it to the hon. Lady that the argument she is using about juries is very difficult to accept? If about 80 per cent. of the population wish to reintroduce hanging or capital punishment, how is it that 100 per cent. of juries will find it very difficult—since they are ordinary men and women—to convict?

Mrs. Hayman: The hon. Gentleman has raised a very important point. I think that we are talking now about the heat of the moment. When people reply to the question, "Do you want the introduction of the death penalty?"—a theoretical question—after an outrage and not knowing who committed the outrage but knowing who has died, they will say, Yes, of course; those bastards have no right to live. They should die." That is a very different situation. Six months later, when the court case has finally come to its end, people are faced not with the victim, who all too often is forgotten, but with the person who did the act. They are faced with the person who has a family.
Let us not delude ourselves. These persons will have families. They will have wives, children and aged persons who will weep for them. Newpapers will set out the story of deprivation and harm that has ended up with the person in the dock, with the possibility of the gallows. Then the public—us; human beings—change their minds. We change our minds from the theoretical matter of saying, "Punish these anonymous people," to saying, "How can I take the responsibility of sentencing that man, or that woman, to death next week?"
That is why it would be so dangerous to assume that we must take public opinion now, on the theoretical question, as the only answer. I think that we should find it a hard taskmaster when it actually came to the trials that would be involved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney) said that we were allowing the terrorists to dictate our law and order and that if we did not support the motion the terrorists would be dictating to us. I think that he was quite wrong. They will be dictating to us if we vote for the motion tonight. They will be making us say, "We have only one answer to your violence, and it is our violence." They will be making us adopt the politics of despair.
There are many who have argued not on the practical case, which is the case upon which this House should judge the issue tonight, but on the very real feelings held by millions of people in this country that, as the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) said, these people have forfeited their right to live. There are not many of us who would waste our breath in defending the rights of these murderers. But the sad thing is that if we voted to return to capital punishment we should be regarding the rights of those people—justice, if one cares to call it that; just deserts for murderers—as more important than the safety of individual citizens of this country and the hope of peace in Northern Ireland. That would be the most tragic irony of all.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): I remind hon. Members that this short debate must finish by 7 o'clock. There are still about 12 hon. Members who wish to take part. I hope that they will apportion their time in a reasonable fashion.

5.34 p.m.

Mr. Robert Carr: My only motivation in approaching this subject is a desire to win the war against terrorism and to protect the British public and enable them once again to live under the Queen's peace. When we ask ourselves about this question, we find that it is inevitably a difficult one. It is a question about which people naturally have very strong feelings. I certainly do. But what we owe the country is a deep judgment, not an emotional response, to show how we believe that the war against terrorism can be won.
As one of those who, having been Home Secretary, has had to come face to face with this responsibility in an


inescapable way, I thought that it might be useful to explain why, motivated as I am, I came to the judgment against the use of capital punishment for terrorist murder—a judgment that I still hold today, in spite of the increase in terrorism to which my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) referred.
My starting point is the consideration that when we are dealing with terrorist killings we are dealing with considerations wholly different from those applying to ordinary murder and ordinary criminal violence. This difference is one of kind and not simply of degree. Therefore, I say straight away that I agree strongly with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that in moral terms the purveyors of death by terrorism have forfeited their right to live.
But that, I believe, is not the question that we actually have to answer. The question upon which we have to judge is whether to exact that forfeit would put the brake on terrorism or whether it would not. In my judgment it would not, and I should like to try to explain why.
I think that our judgment has to start from the fact that, as I have said, we are not dealing with the individual criminal or gangs of criminals in the ordinary sense; we are fighting a war against an enemy with a significant degree of cohesion, organisation and collective purpose. Our strategy must be equally coherent and organised, in order first to contain and then ultimately to destroy the capacity and the strength of the terrorists in both numbers and resources. In order to succeed in this, our policies must succeed in achieving a number of different objectives simultaneously. We have to integrate our judgment about the extent to which the question of capital punishment would affect not just one factor but a whole number of factors.
I should like to test the effect of capital punishment on a number of what I believe are essential objectives. First, there is the obvious one of deterrence, about which we have heard a good deal. I would not wish to dispute the fact that capital punishment presumably must deter some people. I do not know how we measure how many. But that does

not mean to say that its overall result is one of deterrence, because we must remember that we are dealing not principally with the ordinary criminal thug; we are dealing, presumably, to a large extent with an unusually high proportion of people who are fanatics—people who, however perverted they may be in their thinking and feelings, see themselves as fighting for a cause that is higher than themselves, and people who are living in a state of mind of dangerous exultation, in which they hold even their own lives at a relatively low price. They are high on the drugs of fanaticism.
I believe that when we look at the history of terrorism in Ireland in the past, in Palestine as it was, in Cyprus and, perhaps, more recently in Spain, we find that there really is no evidence that the overall result of the threat of capital punishment is effectively to deter terrorists.
There is, in addition, a further aspect of the deterrent consideration which is in our minds today when we think of the siege in Balcombe Street. Would not Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, and the police dealing with the incident, be in even greater danger of their lives today had the gunmen locking them in and locking themselves in together with them already been subject to capital punishment for things they may have done prior to taking that step?

Mr. Michael Mates: My right hon. Friend may make that point, but we do not know the circumstances that exist in the room, and therefore they might argue equally powerfully the other way. Let us suppose that one of the four terrorists had nothing to lose but the other three had not yet committed offences for which the penalty would be death. What would the pressures be? Would not the deterrent of certain capture and execution make a powerful argument for the three to go against the other? We are hypothesising, but it is dangerous to take hypothetical cases and to try to make facts out of them.

Mr. Carr: This is not a matter to which one can apply a rule and which can be measured precisely. This is more a matter of judgment. I believe that if we spoke to most of the policemen, of all ranks, involved in that operation the majority


judgment would fall heavily on the side which I have just put forward. I believe that the greatest deterrent controlling the gunmen in Balcombe Street is the belief, which I trust they have, that if they try to shoot their way out, shooting the hostages in the process, they themselves are in near certainty of being shot by the forces of law and order. I do not agree with those who suggest that the ordinary citizen should keep a gun in his pocket or in the back room of his house. But let us face it: there is a big difference between judicial capital punishment and the people's police force properly keeping law and order, admitting that that does involve in rare circumstances the need for officers to carry and, yes, even to use guns.
We must next consider the effect of capital punishment on the recruitment of new active terrorists. Here again we have to form a judgment. If we were thinking only in terms of the normal criminal thug, I should be inclined to take the view that capital punishment might reduce recruitment. However, that is not the case. Looking at the evidence from Ireland in the past, from Palestine, Cyprus and Spain, there is at least an indication which should be taken seriously—that the highly political types who are the most dangerous in this area and who tend to be high on fanaticism are drawn into recruitment when executions take place.

Mr. Gorst: rose—

Mr. Carr: It is giving way, more than anything else, which makes my speeches longer. I should like to do so but I am afraid I cannot.
We must also remember that the strength of the terrorists against whom we are fighting depends on money and supplies as well as on people. We must think about where the money and supplies come from. We believe that most of them come from abroad. What would be the effect of a series of executions on the sort of people who are supplying this money and material from abroad? What would be the effect, for example, of the execution of a young person, and above all of a young woman, however much she had culpably committed a terrorist murder, on that section of the Irish descendant population of the United States who, alas, one fears is one of the main sources at least of monetary aid to the IRA?
We must consider the effect of the death penalty on the degree of co-operation which the police would get from individuals who provided information which led to detection and arrest of terrorists. We must consider the effect on those who give cover and safe haven to the terrorists, on those called to give not only information to the police but evidence later in court, and on those who serve on juries. Those people would be affected partly by sympathy, or lack of sympathy, for the terrorists' cause, and partly—we must not underestimate this—by the degree of intimidation to which they are subjected. No one can have any real doubt that capital punishment and trials with execution at the end of them might alienate some people's sympathy and certainly would be in danger of increasing the degree of intimidation on the type of people I have mentioned. We must also consider the effect on the co-operation from the Government and the other authorities in the Republic of Eire.
Finally, we must consider the extent to which the introduction of the death penalty would or would not assist us in driving the vital wedge between the terrorists and the Irish population, both north and south of the border.
I am not trying to prove that any one of these considerations is definite or decisive in its effect. However, I wish to repeat my original point. In our strategy for fighting the war against terrorism, we must make a judgment and an assessment of the overall effect of all the factors I have mentioned and, no doubt, others I have not mentioned. We must not consider only one of them.
It was when I took all those factors into account when I was Home Secretary that I was in no doubt that my integrated judgment had to be that the introduction of the death penalty was more likely to hinder than to help us in the war against terrorism. I do not think it is irrelevant, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) also said, for me to point out that in my day at the Home Office my view was also the considered view of the majority of the senior Army officers in Ireland and of the majority of senior police officers in both Ireland and this country. Although that is not decisive, it is surely something of which the House must take serious account. I ask the


Home Secretary whether that is still the strong majority opinion of those in charge of the battle against terrorists.
The judgment I make is a hard-headed and not a sentimental one. I should not wish to make a sentimental judgment and appeal to this country to support it.
My final and most important point is the need to carry public opinion with us. The Government and this House must not underestimate the deeply-felt need by the great majority of British people to be convinced that we are fighting this battle against the terrorists in the strongest and most effective manner open to us.

Mr. Gorst: rose�ž

Mr. Carr: I shall not give way. The Government's policy must not appear feeble. It must appear strong. We should not be surprised that the public as a whole turn so strongly towards capital punishment. At present they feel that the battle is not being won. They have doubts about the effective will of the Government to prosecute. I am not saying that they are justified, but that is what they feel. It is up to the Government to ensure that the public take a different view.
To the great majority of people capital punishment is the one obvious weapon to hand which has not been used. If we decide, as I hope we shall, that it would be a mistake to use capital punishment and that it would not help to win the war against terrorism, a much greater and more continuous effort must be made by Ministers and all the rest of us as well to convince the public why we take that view. We must also convince people that other policies are likely to be effective.
For that purpose I want to put five short requests to the Home Secretary. First, and here I take the point of the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney), will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that life imprisonment for terrorist murderers means what it says? Secondly, will he restate categorically the assurance that the present Government will never do a political deal which involves any amnesty for terrorist murderers? Thirdly, will he assure us that the Government will offer large financial rewards for information leading to the

detection of terrorists? I agree that the setting of a fixed public tariff might not be sensible, but it must be widely known that the rewards will vary according to the quality of the intelligence obtained and that they will not be limited by any financial ceiling. It must be known that they will be as large as may be needed to get the information which we require.
Fourthly, will the Home Secretary pledge the Government's readiness to introduce further special powers if the police make a case for them? The most obvious candidate is, of course, stricter controls over travel between Britain and both the North and the South of Ireland. When I was Home Secretary the police were of the opinion that that would be more of a hindrance than a help to them. Is that still their view? If so, well and good. If not, or if their view should change in future, will the Home Secretary pledge this House without delay to bringing in those extra powers?
Finally, will the Home Secretary pledge to this House and the country that no resources will be spared which would assist in winning this battle against terrorism? We know that the economic crisis demands cuts in Government expenditure and an incomes policy, which we support. But the battle against terrorism demands the same absolute priority as a traditional type of war. It is indeed a special case of a unique kind. Although different in kind and, thank goodness, much smaller in scale, the terrorists are waging a war against our society and freedom just as fundamental as Nazi Germany 35 years ago. Our commitment to win this war must be just as complete now as it was then. That is what the country wants to know. If we can convince the country that that is the extent of our commitment, people will follow the lead that we give them. If we do not give that lead, people will not follow us.
It is right that this matter should be discussed today, and I believe it is right that we should be free to discuss it at frequent intervals.

5.52 p.m.

Mr. Leo Abse: I regret that I have to comment upon the questions which have been put to the Home Secretary by the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) by saying that, although


affirmative replies could be given to all of them, those replies, if they were given us, would be in good faith affirmatively, but would be lacking in authenticity In approaching this problem it is idle to pretend that simple, direct solutions exist for resolving it.
The suggestion has been made by hon. Members on both sides of the House that life imprisonment must mean life imprisonment and that that is the answer. The truth is that, except for a small minority of people whose continued dangerousness is obvious after many years of imprisonment, we cannot pledge that people will remain all their lives in prison. That pledge just cannot be given.
The distinguished psychiatrist who is assisting the police in the Balcombe Street incident and who assisted them in the Spaghetti House incident, with myself, Sir Leon Radzinowicz and the Bishop of Exeter, was engaged for some years on the task of examining the position of people who had been sentenced to life imprisonment and about whom decisions had to be made on how they would live there for ever. One conclusion in the resulting report presented by the Home Office Advisory Committee is that it is impossible for a society which has democratic values to continue to contain men who know that no other punishment can be meted out to them if they rebel and that no rewards can be given if they co-operate.
If peace is restored to troubled Ireland, as we all hope, there will inevitably be a demand for the release of convicted terrorists. Indeed, many hon. Gentlemen opposite who support capital punishment were signatories to a motion demanding or requiring that one of the worst gangsters in our lifetime should be released from Spandau Prison. Those of us who still carry the memory of comrades who lost their lives, in whatever Service we served, and those who, like myself, belong to a people who lost millions in the holocaust, realise that there comes a time in a civilised world when we recoil from continued imprisonment, even of Hess whose crimes and enormities cannot be sufficiently catalogued. Therefore, it is unwise to believe that life means life. That cannot be the response offered to the problem.
I do not want to catalogue all that has been said with far greater fluency,

and the authority of a former Home Secretary, on the lack of a deterrent or, indeed, the dangers if we reintroduce hanging. People have said that it may deter some. As an abolitionist I accept that it may deter some, but, as someone who, perhaps too often, as a solicitor was in a position to defend people when the rope existed and State strangulation was the order of the day, I was struck by the fact that one had no thanks—on the contrary—from those whom one believed one should be able to persuade, to put forward a defence which could save them from the rope.
It is a mistake to believe that murderers are rational people with the responses that we may have. In fact, they are irrational people. It is an undoubted fact that the rope may deter some, but it attracts the disturbed. Who can dispute that death is an attraction for many murderers? Every year more than a third of those who commit murder actually commit suicide long before they are arrested. We are clearly taking a risk if we put that type of psychology against the background of Irish culture where martyrdom for noble causes can be so perverted that it can be attributed to evil men. We may actually incite the activating of murder rather than the containing of it.
I do not want to adumbrate all the obvious arguments relating to kidnapping and hostages. They have already been eloquently put forward.
The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mr. Gilmour) referred to what happened about the events in Spain and the fact that there the response to the death penalty was an escalation of violence. Spain has not learned any lesson from that experience, but Israel has. I do not think that this country is less able to maintain civilised values than Israel, which has repudiated any idea of responding to Arab terrorism by hanging. The people of Israel, in the face of grave provocation, have maintained their democratic values. I do not believe that this country would do less.
It is odd that although we have all been speaking on the pros and cons of capital punishment in particular circumstances we have avoided dealing with the aetiology, the roots of the present bout of terrorism which afflicts us. Where does it come from? It is simple to talk of life


imprisonment. It is dramatic to respond by saying that hanging is the answer. But shall we turn our eyes away from those who are responsible for exacerbating the conditions in which the terrorists breed?
I went to Northern Ireland earlier this year and met some of the Provisional leaders. I found them to be largely men of my own generation, tired, depleted and exhausted, obviously feeling the effect of being contained by a sophisticated Army which had developed its techniques of urban guerrilla warfare. It was my judgment, after I had spoken to them for a considerable time, that they were losing the battle, and that they could continue it only if through provocation they could be augmented by young men from the lost generation of Belfast, those brought up in the appalling conditions to which one of my hon. Friends referred, and when I talked to the leadership of the para-military organisation, the UDF, I was also struck by the fact that they recoiled, as has since been clearly shown, from all the activities of the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) and the hon. Members who support his view.
There have been two Gallup polls. There have been references in this debate to the poll which found that the public wanted the reintroduction of hanging, but there has so far been no reference to the other response of public opinion, when it said categorically that it wanted the Army to get out of Northern Ireland. That response must also be considered.
The country is tired of our importing violence into this country, tired of our giving out large sums at a time when all our constituents are enduring economic travail. That situation is in no small measure occurring as a result of the provocative stance taken by the hon. Member for Antrim, North and all his colleagues, who, refusing to take the more constructive view of the right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig), expect this country to coarsen its values by introducing capital punishment precisely because they are inciting the Northern Irish community to refuse to participate in power-sharing in Northern Ireland.
Therefore, when I hear on all sides, and certainly from those hon. Members, that if we introduce capital punishment

we must stretch it to include all those who contribute in the slightest degree to terrorism, I believe that if that attitude were adopted there would be hon. Members and many people in the country, weary of the situation in Northern Ireland, who would say that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends should be placed in the dock.
Neither hanging nor life imprisonment is the answer. The answer lies in Northern Ireland, in being able completely to isolate the group in Northern Ireland responsible for the terrorism, and to make arid the soil from which they spring. A terrible responsibility lies on those hon. Members who could give leadership but who are sabotaging all the efforts to bring the two communities together.

Mr. John Stokes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will there be an opportunity for hon. Members in favour of the motion to be called? Apart from the mover, only one such hon. Member has been called so far.

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Member is wrong. However, I take note.

6.5 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: The House must face reality. Either we have the death penalty for all murders or do we do not have the death penalty at all. That is the real issue before the House. Everyone with any experience of the obvious legal difficulties of trying to distinguish between one class of murder and another knows that it would be impossible in practice to do so.

Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn: rose—

Mr. Hooson: I shall not give way at the very beginning of my speech.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) on the manner in which he made his speech, but I disagree with him profoundly. He suggested that we should not allow law-breakers to make our law. He is in great danger of doing that very thing, of allowing a bunch of terrorists to determine for us what our law should be. He completely failed to make a case for the special efficacy of hanging, or the death penalty however carried out, to deal with terrorists.
I agree with many of the points against the motion made in the debate, and I do not want to reiterate them. I want to deal with the matter from the point of view of a practising lawyer who has probably prosecuted and defended at least as many murderers as any other hon. Member in this House. I agree with the right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Can) that the death penalty is a deterrent to some people. I have always believed that, although I have also always believed in the abolition of the death penalty. It is a deterrent to some, but is not generally a deterrent; its overall effect is not to deter.
In the year 1800 there were more than 200 offences in this country for which death was the penalty. It was removed by a process of gradual elimination. Many of the arguments put forward today for the introduction of the death penalty as a particularly efficacious way of dealing with terrorism have been used many times before in connection with other offences and the removal of the death penalty. By 1957 the death penalty had virtually disappeared in our country.
Taking the view that I do, however, I would vote for the return of the death penalty if I thought that it would be particularly efficacious for dealing with terrorism, if I thought that it would reduce terrorism or make it easier for the community to deal with terrorists. But I do not think that it would. My reading of the situation is that the result would be exactly the opposite—that the introduction of the death penalty at this stage would make it virtually impossible politically to deal with the situation in Northern Ireland.
The hon. Member for Burton is trying to distinguish between acts of terrorism and other acts—acts of murder, for example. If someone shoots a bank clerk in the pursuit of robbing the bank, with the motive of simply robbing it, presumably that is not to be a capital offence. But if someone robs a bank for a political motive, to obtain the money to finance his political organisation, which has been done many times in Northern Ireland—

Mr. Fairbairn: Treason.

Mr. Hooson: With great respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, that is not treason. Presumably that is to be a capital

murder, if the hon. Member for Burton's view is accepted.
Let us consider the situation in practice. There is a trial of three men charged with a bank robbery in which a bank clerk is killed. The men have Irish accents. Because of the introduction of the death penalty for terrorism, they all deny that they had a political motivation. The prosecution produces evidence that one of the men was a member of the IRA three years ago. He denies that he continued as a member thereafter. The other two men, including the man who shot the bank clerk, deny that they are members of the IRA, and there is no evidence of it. There would be grave suspicion in the case. What would the jury do?

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Its duty.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us have short speeches so that both sides of the argument can be put.

Mr. Hooson: I believe that I was called a few minutes after six o'clock. I have been speaking for only seven minutes.
In the example that I have given, the situation for the judge and jury would be almost impossible. How is it possible for a jury to distinguish between one motive and another? The man with the greater culpability, although all may be equally guilty in law, may say "I shot him in cold blood. I had a financial motive. I did it simply to rob a bank." He would not face the death penalty. It might be suggested that the other man had some political motivation, or there might be some evidence to that effect.
Such a situation would bring our law into disrepute. One result could be far fewer convictions. Apart from that, there is the time factor in an important case. The first step is the apprehension and arrest of the alleged murderers. There is then the delay between arrest and cornmittal and then trial.
Anyone who has been involved in a trial which carries the death penalty will know that a completely different atmosphere prevails. The interest of the Press and the public is totally different. That is illustrated by the fact that we get to know and remember as members of the public the names of the accused. Which hon. Members remember the names of


the people who were convicted for the terrible bomb outrage in Birmingham? I do not think there is one hon. Member who can get to his feet to tell me their names, yet they were convicted of one of the most terrible crimes in the past two years. If there had been a death penalty, the House would have known the names of the accused, as would the public.
Considerable time would elapse between trial and appeal. If there were to be a new offence involving political motivation it is very likely that a case would go to the House of Lords to determine whether the political motivation had been properly proved. We can easily imagine the propaganda opportunity that the whole process would provide. Terrorists are concerned about propaganda and they would exploit the situation to the full. They would ensure that they gained maximum propaganda capital from one of their members being put on trial. They would utilise every opportunity.
If the motion were to be carried and if we were to change the law, we would be doing the greatest possible damage to ourselves in the war against terrorists. I come to this view—it is a matter of judgment—as someone who has practised at the Bar for many years. I am reinforced in my view because I know that most of the senior members of Scotland Yard, many of whom believe in the death penalty for murder, are against introducing it specifically for terrorism. They believe that it would make it much more difficult for them to get their information, and I am told that information is coming along fairly well at the moment. The supply of information is very much better now than it was a year or two ago. The Army officers in command in Northern Ireland are also against the death penalty for terrorism.
What is the House to do? Where is the example that can be given by those who support the motion of the special efficacy of the death penalty against terrorism? Was it in Israel in 1947? Was it in Cyprus or Aden? Was it in Spain? Five men were shot in Spain and nine policemen were murdered in the fortnight that followed. The case for the special efficacy of the death penalty in dealing with terrorism is not made out. I would say that every rational

argument is against it. That is why the House should be against it.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I call the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Mr. Bradford). He has promised to be very short.

6.15 p.m.

Mr. Robert J. Bradford: This subject is far too serious to approach with obscurantist emotionalism, the effect of which is to render some hon. Members impervious to the horrors of terrorism. However much we may dislike having to make a choice tonight, it is clear that a decision must now be taken on capital punishment. I have considered the alternatives to capital punishment and I am not impressed by the argument for imprisonment or variations on that theme, including periodical corporal punishment.
To develop that point would be to stray outside the terms of reference for the debate, but it appears to me to be quite wrong that a terrorist's sentence should be determined either by his later conduct or by political expediency. It is the nature of the crime which should determine the intensity of the sentence.
I shall quickly dispose of the dangerous concept which has been expressed by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse), which provides encouragement for terrorists. The concept is that, if the objective which motivates terrorists has some kind of credibility, there is some justification for the death and destruction which they cause. That is a ludicrous concept and a disgrace to a Chamber of this nature.

Mr. Abse: rose—

Mr. Bradford: No, I shall not give way. The hon. Gentleman's persistence is exceeded only by his ignorance of the Northern Ireland situation. There has been more IRA activity in the period of the power-sharing Executive than at any other time during the Northern Ireland crisis.
Terrorism must not be dispassionately diagnosed it must be smashed. In other words, death and destruction by individuals or groups is wrong even though that which gives rise to such immoral action may also be questionable.
What punishment should apply to the cancerous evil of terrorism? Let us not substitute words like "reform" or "rehabilitation" for "punishment". Let us accept that punishment is a necessary element in society. In the face of devastating acts of murder, the State has no business to fritter away time on the irrelevancy of possible reform and assistance to that end. The State cannot guarantee the reform of murderers. Therefore, it is negating its responsibility to society. When punishment ceases to be the paramount consideration, the result is that standards are conceded and the value placed upon human personality is reduced.
We must recognise evil for what it is and not rationalise it so as to provide an opportunity for philanthropic orgies. We must apply a punishment which is commensurate with the crime. Although we have heard idealists, romantics and the weak-willed put forward their point of view, everyone knows that murder is wrong. People know the difference between right and wrong.
The media have an important rôle in demonstrating the horror of the kind of excesses which are shared as much by those who suffer at the hands of terrorists as by those who display emotive feelings during the trials of terrorists.
There are those who contend that the State has the right to kill in the defence of ordinary citizens and in the defence of the State, and that the way round the problem of reintroducing capital punishment is to regard terrorists as enemies who are at war with us and to insist that the rules of war shall prevail. I do not accept that that is the best method of dealing with terrorism.
The police in this country do not carry arms. How can they encounter terrorists? In Northern Ireland the terrorists are encountered directly by the Army, and we know that that does not in any way reduce the bombings. Secondly, prisoners of war have rights after capture. I maintain that terrorists, apart from a statutory trial, should have no rights.
The issue is not whether capital punishment is a deterrent. The fact that both sides resort to statistics to prove their point means that the exercise is futile because it is inconclusive. The one thing that is certain is that capital punishment

deters the terrorist, who is removed from society by capital punishment.
When capital punishment is applied, there is commensurate punishment with the crime and at least one terrorist has been deterred. It does the Northern Ireland people a grave injustice to suggest that the murder of educationally subnormal boys and girls and the murder of a two-year-old girl will result in a kind of secular canonisation of IRA terrorists. That is not true.
I conclude by saying that we must all be realistic. Hostages will be taken, counter-murders will occur, but unfortunately hostage and murder are ironies of our fate. One thing is clear: terrorism will win if we compromise our attitude in respect of the punishment applied. For these reasons, I shall support those who wish to reintroduce capital punishment.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Mark Carlisle: It is nearly 11 years to the day since I stood where I now stand and made my maiden speech in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. A year ago today, for the first time in my life, I voted for the restoration of capital punishment in this area of crime. I did so because, having considered the escalation of terrorism that we saw in that period, I came to the conclusion and judgment that we were right to bring back capital punishment for terrorist activities. I only regret that in giving consideration to those problems, I eventually came down on the opposite side of the argument to my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) of whose Home Office team I was glad to be a member in the Conservative Government.
Let me briefly explain the reasons that brought me to this conclusion. I believe that acts of terrorism consisting of wanton devastation of property and life comprise one of the major threats faced by Western civilisation today. I was fortunate to be brought up in a generation that avoided the problems of a world war. Instead, we have faced problems of the urban guerrilla who, by the bomb and by the gun, takes the lives of innocent citizens who probably have no part in the political motivation that caused the action. I believe that we, as a Parliament, have a duty, so far as possible, to protect the people of this country against such attacks.
Regrettably, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot, through the security forces, provide the necessary degree of protection from such attacks. Therefore, I believe that we must take every means we can to discourage urban terrorists from operating within these shores. In a situation in which our whole society is under attack, I think that we are wrong in advance to remove the power to use any sanction.
Secondly, I believe that if there is an area in which the death penalty must surely be a deterrent, it is in that area in which people choose to set out to kill, having taken a deliberate calculation. Of course, one will not deter the fanatic, but there are some cases in which the fear of the penalty will deter the weakest link in the chain, and as a result the whole chain will collapse. The tremendous growth in terrorist activity in the last two or three years hardly suggests that we are being effective in our deterrents against these attacks. At least, we have a duty to test whether the threat of the death penalty would have the deterrent effect that its champions have always claimed.
I am concerned, and always have been, by the argument about the danger of increasing the amount of hostage-taking and reprisals as a result of the introduction of capital punishment. The House would be foolish to underestimate the strength of that argument. I realise that the fear of hostage-taking will continue to exist so long as we keep people in long-term captivity. That is a major calculation in coming to a conclusion on this matter. But we must distinguish between the danger of short-term reprisals and the effect of a long-term deterrent. At the moment, we appear to be living in an escalating situation of greater and greater terrorist activity. I am not sure that the danger of short-term reprisals outweighs the deterrent effect of action against the terrorist, whose activities may affect the future of this country.
I agree with the Home Secretary that this is a matter of judgment from which emotions should be removed. Having listened to the debate, I cannot pretend that I have found mine an easy course to take. In the end I am persuaded by 'the strength of public opinion outside the House. I believe that the polls are right.

I do not believe that public opinion is conclusive, but we should never disregard it. The public have now heard sufficient of the issues and arguments to be aware of the danger of escalation, yet, despite that danger, they are calling loudly and clearly for this House, in their name, to take that action. It is for those reasons, despite my previous views, that I shall vote for the motion.

6.27 p.m.

Mr. Eldon Griffiths: Nine years ago, three unarmed policemen were shot to death on a sunny morning in a street in Shepherds Bush. Many hon. Members will remember that incident because it produced a national shock. The Prime Minister made a statement to the House, and the Queen attended a memorial service in Westminster. The whole nation mourned the death of those three unarmed policemen shot down in pursuit of their duty.
The situation today is very different. It is bad enough that we are beset by terror, but there is something worse. We are getting used to killings, murder is becoming commonplace and terror is becoming a normal activity.
My hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) gave a grisly catalogue of bombings. I speak only for the police. I speak of Stephen Tibble, a young constable just out of training school, who was shot dead in Chelsea when trying to stop an armed robber. I speak also of Sergeant Brian Dawson, shot and left for dying in a Leicester street; Constable John Scolfield, shot dead while making an inquiry of a driver in Caterham; Superintendent Richardson, shot dead while chasing a bank robber in Blackpool; Constable Dennis Smith, shot dead in a panda car; Police Constable Guthrie, shot dead at the age of 19 when he caught a shopbreaker in the act; Detective Constable Keith Coward, shot nine times by two murderers when he stopped their car in the Thames Valley. One of his murderers at the trial said of Keith Coward "He was the bravest bastard I have ever seen".
In all these and in other ways the police are in the front line. That is why the Police Federation, with which I declare a connection, has a special claim to be heard in this debate. The


police force has a claim on Parliament for protection, because the police protect us in this place. Policemen also have a right to our protection because their lives are at risk and because they come into closer contact with murderers and terrorists than does any other section of the community. Because of their experience and judgment they have the right to be considered with the utmost seriousness.
The Joint Central Committee of the Police Federation, representing 105,000 policemen up to and including the rank of chief inspector, has carefully considered this question. Its members have asked me to inform the House that the considered view of the men and women who make up the police service is that capital punishment would assist the police in carrying out their duties.
The Home Secretary thinks otherwise. I honour him. Some chief officers also think otherwise. Speaking, however, for the overwhelming majority of policemen in this country—be they the CID, the Special Branch, the Special Patrol Group or the uniformed branch—the Federation is unanimous. Its members regard abolition as a mistake. They believe, and they think they can prove, that it has exposed many more policemen to danger and to death than would have been the case if the penalty of capital punishment had remained. Above all, they are convinced that the task of resisting violent crime, of combating terror and protecting the lives of their fellow citizens, including those of the police, would be materially less dangerous and less onerous if the capital sentence were now to be restored.
I have only two minutes in which to speak before the Home Secretary replies to the debate. I turn to the question of whether the terrorist would be deterred. In my view and that of the Police Federation, acts of political terror are carried out by three types of men. At one extreme are the fanatics, the men who kill for their beliefs. At the other end of the spectrum are the hired guns, the men who kill for pay. Most other terrorist killers are men and women of more limited intelligence, murderers of mixed motive who kill out of a witch's brew of idealism, bravado, hatred, thrills obedience to their leaders and fear of themselves being killed by their fanatical comrades.
Among those three groups of killers the argument of deterrence means nothing to the fanatic. I fairly concede that the death penalty would not stop him. However, the death penalty can stop, and in the view of police it would stop, a significant proportion of the other two groups. The hired gun becomes more expensive and much harder to recruit once his own life is at risk, because he is above all a calculator of the odds. The same goes for the other group of killers, the NCOs of terror. Like the hired gun, this kind of man can be induced by fear of execution to hesitate, pause and feel frightened before he risks his own life.
I conclude by putting three short questions to the House. First, which hon. Member, whatever his conscience may tell him, can say with enough certainty to take the responsibility of possibly sending others to their death that in this particular matter he is wiser and more experienced that the British police?
Secondly, which hon. Member can say with enough moral authority to be willing to risk the life of the policemen who protect us that not one professional gangster who sets out to commit a crime would be deterred by the fear of hanging from taking a firearm with him?
Finally, which hon. Member, however convinced he may be that the death penalty might lead to the taking of hostages and reprisals—as also does life imprisonment—is so certain as to overrule the views of the police that not one hired assassin, not one cowardly bomber and not one confused youngster would be cut off from an act of terror by the knowledge that he might suffer the same fate as he now vicariously contemplates visiting upon others? We cannot stop terror or murder by hanging, but we can reduce the numbers of those engaged in committing these crimes.

6.32 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): The House has listened with great seriousness and interest to a number of contributions. I shall comment later on some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence). I also listened with great interest to the remarks made by the hon. and learned Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle). In a way,


his premises and method of thought on this matter are close to mine, but it so happens that we come to firmly different conclusions. However, I shall endeavour to deal with some of his arguments as well as with other points that were raised.
As the House will be aware, by a strange coincidence this debate falls debate and vote on this subject. This, upon the exact anniversary of last year's perhaps, makes it peculiarly appropriate for anyone, like myself, who has had to speak on both occasions, to look back and see to what extent the arguments that he then used have stood up, and to consider also, with as unprejudiced a mind as he can muster, whether anything has occurred in the meantime that invalidates the way he then voted.
We were aware of the extent of the horror a year ago. Indeed, we had a worse incident and a worse total behind us then. We spoke and voted then in the shadow of the Birmingham incident, which resulted in 21 dead, and after a year in which 43 people were killed and over 500 injured. There has, alas, been little let up, but it has not been worse. There have been 11 killed and 255 injured—bad enough in all conscience—during the past year.
Last year I began my reply by saying that I rejected entirely—and I still do—any idea that those on one side of this argument were more virtuous than those on the other, and that those on one side were more the repositories of the values of civilisation than were those who took a different view. That I repeat. I hope and believe that at a time of considerable and continuing menace, when deep passions of apprehension and anger are stirred outside, all of us are giving our most informed judgment—without, for once, the help of the Whips—as to how, on a balance of probability and a basis of rational argument, we can best protect our people.
After rehearsing the traditional arguments—which I shall not do on this occasion—I said last year that I set them aside, even though they had swayed me deeply for 20 years or more, as they have many other hon. Members. They are not negligible. Far from it. Not the least of them, and the only one I shall mention, is the possibility of wrongful conviction.

In my two periods as Home Secretary I have had too many such cases to deal with, including three which have come to light in the past year, for them to be easily dismissed. It may be that they would be less likely to occur in a terrorist context. I do not know. However, in my consideration of this matter I am prepared to regard terrorist murder, if it can be defined, in a separate category, and to consider the issue without regard to previous conceptions and solely in relation to what would now give us the greatest protection.
I have already indicated that I have no regard for the lives of those who either wantonly or specifically set out to kill or maim others. Some of them blow themselves up. Others risk being shot by the police, quite lawfully, in the course of their nefarious activities. I believe that there is little danger of a trigger-happy police force. That was far from the case at the Spaghetti House, or in Balcombe Street. The police have been patient, resourceful, disciplined and determined. However, the loss that might occur to terrorist lives in these circumstances would be very different, in its effect, from the judicial exacting of the ultimate penalty.
I am still convinced that those who believe that that would be even an approach to a passport to security ignore or misjudge a number of vital considerations. First, they ignore the substantial and hazardous effluxion of time that is inevitably involved in the progress towards a judicial killing. We cannot avoid committal, trial, appeal and then the final stages. No doubt the old arrangements for appeal or otherwise might be varied. Lord Hailsham devoted all the great ingenuity of his powerful mind to putting forward an alternative arrangement this week. He propounded a sort of inverted parole board machinery—a multi-disciplinary group of perhaps six people, who would reach a final decision after the trial. I do not like it. What criteria would they possibly use? As I know only too well, faced with much easier decisions, parole boards often split. Confronted with these fraught decisions they would do so still more often, and frequently right down the middle. What would we do then? What are the prospects for an escalation of violence during these processes—general violence, the


taking of hostages, or specific violence against those involved in the processes?
I read a letter in The Times yesterday morning that suggested that the Birmingham bombings a year ago were directly due to my decision, which I believe commanded the support of the House, to ban a public funeral for the IRA man who had blown himself up in Coventry. The letter ended, rather inconsequentially, by demanding the death penalty. If the banning of a funeral caused 21 deaths, what do people imagine might be caused, provided the capacity was there, by the slow advance of judicial hanging upon a specified morning? It might be answered that the death penalty would deter, but would it? No one can suggest that being an Irish terrorist is a safe occupation. They have killed each other by the hundred in Ulster. Nor is such a view compatible with the facts of what is happening elsewhere, or the psychosis, as I would call it, of Irish terrorism itself.
Spain executed five terrorists in October. Where was the protection of fear that followed? Nine policemen were shot in the next fortnight. On the psychosis of Irish terrorism, death is of course the trade of the terrorists. No doubt their first desire is to deal it out to others, but it is a profound mistake to believe that they are not themselves prepared to become involved in part of the grisly deal. The importance of the funeral in their mythology is eloquent witness to that.
I shall not attempt to deal with the issue of martyrdom, which is a complicated one, but it would require a singular insensitivity to history to believe that its attractions do not have to be balanced against its highly doubtful deterrence. Some people may say that that applies only to the hard core of the terrorist movement—that one may create some perversely triumphant martyrs but that the supporting baggage train would at least be deterred. I disagree. Whatever the reaction of the moment, one would not, in practice, and least of all under Lord Hailsham's formula, be able to hang the members of the train. One cannot hang landladies, mothers who shelter their sons, or women who shelter their husbands. Do not let any of us deceive ourselves that we could or would. There could be few things more humiliating and counter-

productive than to introduce a much-proclaimed deterrent that promptly proceeded to break in our hands.
The next consideration ignored by the supporters of the motion, and the last one that I propose to mention, is the problem of how to deal with acts of terrorism in Northern Ireland itself. Capital punishment persisted there, on the statute book, until 1973. It was then abolished, as a considered act of policy in the midst of internecine slaughter far worse than anything that we have known in Great Britain, on the motion of the previous Government. Whatever we decided I do not think it would be practical to reintroduce capital punishment into Northern Ireland. It could certainly not be done without the jury system, which, for reasons we all understand, does not at present exist there. That was recognised by the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) in the remarkable concluding paragraphs of his speech a year ago.
In effect, the right hon. Gentleman said that we should use this supreme weapon of deterrence in Great Britain where we have, alas, suffered 53 fatal casualties in a population of 55 million, but should not risk it in Northern Ireland, where they have suffered over 1,000 deaths in a population of 1½ million. Is that, on this basis, compatible with sense or any coherent view about the unity of the United Kingdom, in favour of which all Opposition Members voted in the Standing Committee this morning, on a finely-balanced technical point? Is it really the view that we should draw a sword of alleged deterrence in England and sheath it in Northern Ireland, where the threat is so much greater? What possible basis of logic or morality is there to that?
Two other points from last year's debate remain highly relevant today. The first is the reality of the threat of long-term, perhaps life-long, imprisonment. This point was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Tomney). The right hon. Member for Carshalton (Mr. Carr) raised it along with a number of other important points, most of which I think I can answer in my few remaining minutes. The question is whether terrorists believe in long-term imprisonment. I recognise that if long sentences were not believed in, that would be a grave weakness in our armoury,


always encouraged by statements in this House, would be very foolish.
Very long sentences have recently been imposed by the courts, and of the 45 people convicted last year of offences related to Irish terrorism, 12 have been sentenced to life imprisonment and 24 to sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years. These tough sentences were fortified by stern recommendations by the judges about the long-term future. I take those recommendations very seriously—indeed, they are written into our practice for dealing with such sentences—and so, I believe, will any of my successors in office.
There will be no amnesty. I recognise no political excuses for cold-blooded crimes of murder or maiming. Those who have committed them will serve for decades and, in some cases, until the end of their lives. That is my view, and it would be the view, I believe, of anyone who is likely to hold office.
I turn to the views of the police, to which the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) referred. He put forward the view of the Police Federation, which is of long standing. It has been opposed, not merely in this situation but in all, to the abolition of the death penalty, and I respect its view. The Federation is representative of a wide body of policemen. That does not mean that it speaks for all policemen, any more than any union that puts forward views on policies speaks for all of its members. But no doubt there are many in the police service, as outside it, who believe instinctively that capital punishment may help.
It is, however, my duty to take the greatest notice of the advice of those in the police service who carry the heaviest responsibility and who are best placed to take an overall view of the threat. A year ago I informed the House of the views of the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, which he had volunteered to me. Had he not done so I would certainly not have thought it right to ask him for a public statement. Equally, I have no intention of taking a running canvass of him or his senior officers, but in view of the strong interest that has been expressed to me by right hon. and hon. Members during this

debate I am prepared to give the view that he has again volunteered to me without the slightest prompting on my part.
The Commissioner has told me that he has in no way changed his views. He has also added that in his opinion the prospects of the police being able to deal successfully with kidnappers would be weakened and the risks to the lives of hostages made greater if the death penalty existed for terrorist murder. In short, he thinks that it would make his job harder rather than easier. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are perfectly entitled to disagree with that view. They should not, however, ignore it, coming as it does from a highly respected chief of police in a very responsible position.
There remains the fact that the public at large want capital punishment. We are all under pressure. I do not ignore this factor. I do, however, think that we should, all of us, be very careful about not encouraging the view that capital punishment, as it is sometimes put, is a policy of guts, and that resistance to it is a policy of softness. I am not clear upon what basis it requires more political guts to go into the "Aye" Lobby than to go into the "No" Lobby. I know that the right hon. Member for Stafford and Stone (Mr. Fraser) has great courage—I have paid public tribute to it, and will continue so to do—but I certainly would not like to say that he has more courage than the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), who is the only one among us who has been twice subject to personally-directed attacks and who takes a different view.
We all owe our constituents great respect for their point of view, but we also owe them our judgment, and our courageous application of it to what is, in our considered view, the best protection that we can give them against the menace that we face and may have to continue to face in the difficult months that lie ahead.
There is no complete security either way. No one, in my view, should pretend to an infallibility of judgment or knowledge on this or on any other matter. But let us say, by our words and our votes, what we think right and not what we think expedient or acceptable. For those who are convinced of the value of the death penalty, there is no problem.


For others, unconvinced either way, it may be reasonable to vote in accordance with outside views, if they are sure that hanging, even if it does no good, will at least do no harm.
That is not my view, nor, I think, is it the view of the great majority of those who have had responsibility, whether in England or in Ireland, whether of this party or that, for dealing with this horrible problem. It could, and I believe would, increase and not diminish the risks to our people, our police, and our security services.
I can now give the right hon. Member for Carshalton the answer to his last question. There will be no lack of resources for carrying to the uttermost this battle against terrorism. There will be no giving in and no irresolution—but neither shall we seek the false remedy of arming ourselves with a weapon which, while superficially attractive to many, would be not merely ineffective against the enemy but dangerous to our own cause.

6.54 p.m.

Mr. Lawrence: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for his speech, if not for his conclusions. I am grateful to all those who have taken part in the debate and particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who has been in her place from start to finish to mark the importance that she thinks this matter has for the country.
I have time to make only one concluding point. It is that if the motion is rejected—I repeat that it is a motion in general principle which has nothing to do with whether it would apply here, there or anywhere else: either one is for the death penalty or against it for terrorist offences causing death—three groups will think that we are out of our minds.
The first group are the police. Time and again the impression has been given here that the police are against capital punishment. That is the most ridiculous and absurd thing that I have heard, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) for putting that matter right. They are in the front line of our security. Those who thought that security was the all-important point in the consideration of whether capital punishment would help

should bear in mind the fact that the overwhelming majority of the police force, who are our security, think that they would be more secure if we had capital punishment for these crimes than if we did not.
I note with interest that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police gave a very limited statement to the Home Secretary. He spoke about the death penalty being inadvisable for kidnapping and the taking of hostages. He said nothing about its being a deterrent. He said nothing about this being his view as a reflection of the will of his force. It is clear that the Commissioner chooses his words, and has chosen his words on this occasion, with great care.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: He began by saying that he had in no way changed the wider expression of his views that I gave to the House last year.

Mr. Lawrence: That has always been the personal view—the personal view—of the Commissioner. It is not the view of the police force that he represents.
The second group of people who will think that we are out of our minds are the people of this country, who simply will not understand why, when they are overwhelmingly—not just widely and deeply, but overwhelmingly—in favour of capital punishment for terrorist offences causing death, we pay no regard to their views.
The third group of people who will think that we are out of our minds are the terrorists themselves. They are not deterred by life imprisonment and they are certainly not deterred by life imprisonment with the promise or hope of amnesty. They are deterred by capital punishment. If they had any spokesmen in this House—I hope to goodness they have not—which side do hon. Members think they would be voting for? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yours."] They would be voting against this motion.
What we need tonight is not excuses for not doing something. What we need and what the country needs is some firmness of purpose and some leadership. I should like to quote some words of Solzhenitsyn which are not inapt:
Hijackings and other forms of terrorism have been spreading tenfold precisely because everyone is ready to capitulate before them.


But as soon as some firmness is shown, terrorism can be smashed for ever.
Let us, I ask, show the police and the terrorists and our people that we will not capitulate to the terrorists but that by firmness we shall smash terrorism. All of us who hate and despise terrorism

can show what we feel about it tonight by voting for the motion.

Question put,
That this House demands capital punish-men for terrorist offences causing death:—

The House divided: Ayes 232, Noes 361.

Division No. 15.]
AYES
[6.58 p.m.


Adley, Robert
Glyn, Dr Alan
Moate, Roger


Aitken Jonathan
Godber, Rt Hon Joseph
Molyneaux, James


Alison, Michael
Goodhart, Philip
Monro, Hector


Arnold, Tom
Goodhew, Victor
Montgomery, Fergus


Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)
Gorst, John
Moore, John (Croydon C)


Awdry, Daniel
Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)
More, Jasper (Ludlow)


Banks, Robert
Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)
Morgan, Geraint


Bell, Ronald
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C)
Morris, Michael (Northampton S)


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torbay)
Gray, Hamish
Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)


Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)
Grieve, Percy
Mudd, David


Berry, Hon Anthony
Griffiths, Eldon
Neave, Airey


Biffen, John
Grylls, Michael
Neubert, Michael


Biggs-Davison, John
Hall, Sir John
Normanton, Tom


Blaker, Peter
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Nott, John


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Hampson, Dr Keith
Onslow, Cranley


Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)
Hannam, John
Oppenheim, Mrs Sally


Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)
Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)
Osborn, John


Bradford, Rev Robert
Harvie Anderson, Rt Hon Miss
Page, John (Harrow West)


Braine, Sir Bernard
Havers, Sir Michael
Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)


Brittan, Leon
Hawkins, Paul
Paisley, Rev Ian


Brotherton, Michael
Henderson, Douglas
Parkinson, Cecil


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hicks, Robert
Pattie, Geoffrey


Bryan, Sir Paul
Holland, Philip
Penhaligon, David


Buchanan-Smith, Alick
Hordern, Peter
Percival, Ian


Bulmer, Esmond
Howell, David (Guildford)
Peyton, Rt Hon John


Burden, F. A.
Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)
Pink. R, Bonner


Butler, Adam (Bosworth
Hunt, John
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Carlisle, Mark
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Prior, Rt Hon James


Carson, John
James, David
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Chalker, Mrs Lynda
Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd amp; W'df'd)
Raison, Timothy


Churchill, W. S.
Jessel, Toby
Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter


Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)
Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)
Rees, Peter (Dover amp; Deal)


Clark, William (Croydon S)
Jones, Arthur (Daventry)
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Clegg, Walter
Jopling, Michael
Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)


Cockcroft, John
Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)


Cope, John
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Ridley, Hon Nicholas


Cordie, John H.
Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine
Ridsdale, Julian


Cormack, Patrick
Kershaw, Anthony
Rifkind, Malcolm


Corrie, John
Kilfedder, James
Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey


Costain, A. P.
Kimball, Marcus
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)


Critchley, Julian
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)


Crouch, David
Kitson, Sir Timothy
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Crowder, F. P.
Knight, Mrs Jill
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)
Lane, David
Ross, William (Londonderry)


Dean, Paul (N Somerset)
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Doig, Peter
Latham, Michael (Melton)
Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)


Drayson, Burnaby
Lawrence, Ivan
Scott-Hopkins, James


du Cann, Rt Hon Edward
Lawson, Nigel
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Dunnett, Jack
Le Marchant, Spencer
Shaw, Michael (Scarborough)


Durant, Tony
Lestor, Jim (Beeston)
Shelton, William (Streatham)


Eden, Rt Hon Sir John
Lewis, Arthur (Newham N)
Shepherd, Colin


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Shersby, Michael


Elliott, Sir William
Loveridge, John
Sims, Roger


Emery, Peter
Luce, Richard
Sinclair, Sir George


Eyre, Reginald
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Skeet, T. H. H.


Fairbairn, Nicholas
MacCormick, Iain
Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)


Fairgrieve, Russell
McCrindle, Robert
Smith, Dudley (Warwick)


Farr, John
McCusker, H.
Speed, Keith


Fell, Anthony
Macfarlane, Neil
Spence, John


Finsberg, Geoffrey
MacGregor, John
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)


Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)
McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)
Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Marten, Neil
Sproat, Iain


Fookes, Miss Janet
Mather, Carol
Stainton, Keith


Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)
Maude, Angus
Stanbrook, Ivor


Fox, Marcus
Maudling, Rt Hon Reginald
Stanley, John


Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford amp; St)
Mawby, Ray
Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)


Fry, Peter
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Mayhew, Patrick
Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)


Gardiner, George (Reigate)
Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stokes, John


Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)
Miscampbell, Norman
Tapsell, Peter


Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)




Tebbit, Norman
Walder, David (Clitheroe)
Winterton, Nicholas


Temple-Morris, Peter
Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek
Wood, Rt Hon Richard


Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret
Warren, Kenneth
Younger, Hon George


Trotter, Neville
Watt, Hamish



van Straubenzee, W. R.
Weatherill, Bernard
TELLERS FOR THE AYES


Vaughan, Dr Gerard
Wells, John
Mr. Michael Mates and


Viggers, Peter
Welsh, Andrew
Mr. Teddy Tay'or


Wakeham, John
Wiggin, Jerry





NOES


Abse, Leo
de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Howell, Denis (B'ham, Sm H)


Allaun, Frank
Delargy, Hugh
Howells, Geraint (Cardigan)


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Dell, Rt Hon Edmund
Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)


Anderson, Donald
Dempsey, James
Huckfield, Les


Archer, Peter
Dodsworth, Geoffrey
Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)


Armstrong, Ernest
Dormand, J. D.
Hughes, Mark (Durham)


Ashley, Jack
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Ashton, Joe
Douglas-Mann, Bruce
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)
Duffy, A. E. P.
Hunter, Adam


Atkinson, Norman
Dunn, James A.
Hurd, Douglas


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth
Hutchison, Michael Clark


Bain, Mrs Margaret
Dykes, Hugh
Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)


Baker, Kenneth
Eadie, Alex
Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)


Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)
Edge, Geoff
Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)


Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)
Edward3, Robert (Wolv SE)
Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)


Bean, R. E.
Ellis, John (Brigg amp; Scun)
Janner, Greville


Beith, A. J.
Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)
Jay, Rt Hon Douglas


Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood
English, Michael
Jeger, Mrs Lena


Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)
Ennals, David
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)


Benyon, W.
Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)
Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Stechford)


Bishop, E. S.
Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)
John, Brynmor


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)
Johnson, James (Hull West)


Boardman, H.
Evans, John (Newton)
Johnson, Walter (Derby S)


Body, Richard
Ewing, Harry (Stirling)
Jones, Alec (Rhondda)


Booth, Albert
Ewing, Mrs Winifred (Moray)
Jones, Barry (East Flint)


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.
Jones, Dan (Burnley)


Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur
Fisher, Sir Nigel
Judd, Frank


Boyden, James (Bish Auck)
Filch, Alan (Wigan)
Kaufman, Gerald


Bradley, Tom
Fitt, Gerard (Belfast W)
Kelley, Richard


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Flannery, Martin
Kerr, Russell


Brocklebank-Fowler, C.
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Kilroy-Silk, Robert


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
King, Evelyn (South Dorset)


Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)
Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Kinnock, Neil


Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)
Ford, Ben
Knox, David


Buchan, Norman
Forrester, John
Lambie, David


Buchanan, Richard
Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)
Lamborn, Harry


Buck, Antony
Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'w'd)
Lamond, James


Budgen, Nick
Freeson, Reginald
Lamont, Norman


Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)
Freud, Clement
Latham, Arthur (Paddington)


Callaghan, Jim (Middleton amp; P)
Garrett, John (Norwich S)
Leadbitter, Ted


Campbell, Ian
Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)
Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton amp; Slough)


Canavan, Dennis
George, Bruce
Lever, Rt Hon Harold


Cant, R. B.
Gilbert, Dr John
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)


Carmichael, Neil
Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)
Lipton, Marcus


Carr, Rt Hon Robert
Ginsburg, David
Litterick, Tom


Carter, Ray
Golding, John
Lloyd, Ian


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Goodlad, Alastair
Luard, Evan


Cartwright, John
Gould, Bryan
Lyon, Alexander (York)


Castle, Rt Hon Barbara
Gourlay, Harry
Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)


Channon, Paul
Graham, Ted
Mabon, Dr J. Dickson


Clemitson, Ivor
Grant, George (Morpeth)
McCartney, Hugh


Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)
Grant, John (Islington C)
McElhone, Frank


Cohen, Stanley
Grist, Ian
MacFarquhar, Roderick


Coleman, Donald
Grocott, Bruce
McGuire, Michael (Ince)


Colquhoun, Mrs Maureen
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Mackenzie, Gregor


Concannon, J. D.
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Mackintosh, John P.


Conlan, Bernard
Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)
Maclennan, Robert


Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)
Hardy, Peter
Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)


Corbett, Robin
Harper, Joseph
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)


Cox, Thomas (Tooting)
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)


Craigen, J. M. (Maryhill)
Hart, Rt Hon Judith
McNamara, Kevin


Crawshaw, Richard
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Madden, Max


Cronin, John
Hatton, Frank
Madel, David


Crosland, Rt Hon Anthony
Hayhoe, Barney
Magee, Bryan


Cryer, Bob
Hayman, Mrs Helene
Maguire, Frank (Fermanagh)


Cunningham, G. (Islington S)
Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Mahon, Simon


Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)
Heath, Rt Hon Edward
Mallalieu, J. P. W.


Davidson, Arthur
Heffer, Eric S.
Marks, Kenneth


Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)
Heseltine, Michael
Marquand, David


Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)
Higgins, Terence L.
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Hooley, Frank
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Davis, Clinton (Hackney C)
Hooson, Emlyn
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Deakins, Eric
Horam, John
Maynard, Miss Joan


Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Meacher, Michael







Mellish, Rt Hon Robert
Richardson, Miss Jo
Thomas, Rt Hon P. (Hendon S)


Mendelson, John
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)


Mikardo, Ian
Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)
Thompson, George


Millan, Bruce
Roderick, Caerwyn
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)


Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)
Rodgers, George (Chorley)
Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)


Miller, Mrs Millie (Ilford N)
Rodgers, William (Stockton)
Tierney, Sydney


Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)
Rooker, J. W.
Tinn, James


Moonman, Eric
Roper, John
Tomlinson, John


Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Rose, Paul B.
Torney, Tom


Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)
Townsend, Cyril D.


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Rowlands, Ted
Tuck, Raphael


Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Royle, Sir Anthony
Tugendhat, Christopher


Moyle, Roland
Sainsbury, Tim
Urwin, T. W.


Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick
St. John-Stevas, Norman
Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.


Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King
Sandelson, Neville
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)


Nelson, Anthony
Scott, Nicholas
Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)


Newens, Stanley
Sedgemore, Brian
Walden, Brian (B'ham, L'dyw'd)


Newton, Tony
Selby, Harry
Walker, Rt Hon P. (Worcester)


Noble, Mike
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)
Walker, Terry (Kingswood)


Oakes, Gordon
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-u-Lyne)
Walters, Dennis


Ogden, Eric
Shore, Rt Hon Peter
Ward, Michael


O'Halloran, Michael
Short, Rt Hon E. (Newcastle C)
Watkins, David


O'Malley, Rt Hon Brian
Short, Mrs Renée (Wolv NE)
Watkinson, John


Orbach, Maurice
Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)
Weetch, Ken


Orme, Rt Hon Stanley
Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)
Wellbeloved, James


Ovenden, John
Sillars, James
White, Frank R. (Bury)


Owen, Dr David
Silverman, Julius
White, James (Pollok)


Padley, Walter
Skinner, Dennis
Whitelaw, Rt Hon William


Palmer, Arthur
Small, William
Whitlock, William


Pardoe, John
Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)
Willey, Rt Hon Frederick


Park, George
Snape, Peter
Williams, Alan (Swansea W)


Parker, John
Spearing, Nigel
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)


Parry, Robert
Spriggs, Leslie
Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford)


Pavitt, Laurie
Stallard, A. W.
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Peart, Rt Hon Fred
Steel, David (Roxburgh)
Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)


Pendry, Tom
Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)
Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)


Perry, Ernest
Stoddart, David
Wilson, Rt Hon H. (Huyton)


Phipps, Dr Colin
Stonehouse, Rt Hon John
Wilson, William (Coventry SE)


Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch
Stott, Roger
Wise, Mrs Audrey


Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Stradling Thomas J.
Woodall, Alec


Prescott, John
Strang, Gavin
Woof, Robert


Price, C. (Lewisham W)
Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.
Wrigglesworth, Ian


Price, William (Rugby)
Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Young, David (Bolton E)


Radice, Giles
Swain, Thomas



Rathbone, Tim
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES


Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)
Mr. Alf Bates and


Reid, George
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
Mr. Kenneth Clarke.


Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)

Question accordingly negatived.

Orders of the Day — CIVIL LIST BILL

Considered in Committee.

[Mr. GEORGE. THOMAS in the Chair}

Clause 1

SUPPLEMENTS TO SUMS PAYABLE UNDER CIVIL LIST ACTS

7.15 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: I beg to move, in page 1, line 12, leave out subsection (2).
The House will recall that on Second Reading of the Bill last week the Prime Minister, referring to the Civil List Act 1972 which made provision for reports from the Royal Trustees, said:
The Civil List Act 1972 was not, however, intended to create a system of annual reviews of the Civil List payments, nor is the procedure that it created—the formal reports by Royal Trustees—suitable for the purpose. That is the basic reason for the legislation which is now before the House.
The Prime Minister went on to say, referring to his statement on 12th February, that the Government had decided to recommend the House to agree to legislation, provided that any further increases in provision for the Civil List should be subject to normal House of Commons Supply procedure, and he explained specifically the reasons for repealing the section of the 1972 Act which required the Royal Trustees to present an annual report. He said:
that the Royal Trustees should report if at any time they think that the Civil List expenditure for the next year will exceed the sums available for meeting that expenditure. This provision, which, as I have said, was intended to be an exceptional provision, would, at a time of inflation, certainly become an annual requirement should the terms of the Act remain unchanged.
The Prime Minister went on to say:
I hope the House will agree that it is undesirable that the Royal Trustees should be required to report annually.—[Official Report, 4th December 1975; Vol. 901, c. 1980–83.]
That is the provision that I seek to reinstate. I seek to go back to the 1972 Act. The Royal Trustees should report annually, and I shall try to explain why.
The Glasgow Herald, which is not normally a Labour paper, made its own

assessment of the reasons for this Bill on 26th November when it said on the front page:
Queen's pay to be buried'.
The article said:
The Government acted yesterday in an attempt to remove the money the State pays the Queen out of the sphere of political controversy. The Civil List Bill, published yesterday, removes the need for the Royal Trustees to approach Parliament for additions to the Civil List, the money voted to meet the Queen's expenses.

Mrs. Winifred Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Thomas. Is it not the custom or tradition of this House that a Member declares his interest at the beginning of his speech'? In view of the fact that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) has an interest in the Queen, and has made considerable sums of money which he has not devoted to a good cause, should he not declare his interest?

The Chairman: We all have an interest in the Queen. Every hon. Member decides for himself whether he has an interest to declare to the House.

Mr. Hamilton: I am not very interested in what the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mrs. Ewing) says, but I am glad she is here. She is paid very large sums of money for attending the European Parliament when she should be accountable here. But she was not here last week when we had the Second Reading of the Bill.

Mrs. Ewing: Will the hon. Member come to the point?

Mr. Hamilton: I shall. The hon. Lady has found a good excuse for letting her constituents know that she is here at all.

Mrs. Ewing: Come to the point.

Mr. Hamilton: I shall deal with the point in my own good way. I suggest that the hon. Lady gets her facts right and makes them outside this Chamber.

Mrs. Ewing: Unlike the hon. Member, I do make them outside.

The Chairman: Order. I must ask the House to cool down, or at least the two hon. Members concerned, and let us proceed with the amendment.

Mr. Hamilton: I was quoting from the Glasgow Herald, which went on to say
Instead it is intended that payment will be made from the Consolidated Fund on an annual basis.
The Prime Minister added on 4th December:
Estimates for increases in 1976 will, when this legislation is enacted, be presented in the usual way and the House will have the same opportunity to discuss and decide those Increases as it has to discuss any other voted money.
No further assurances were given on that.
In my speech on that occasion, I asked whether this meant that there would be occasions for debate, as with various Departments, with a Minister present to answer specific questions on payments made to members of the Royal Household, whether individuals of the Family or the Household in general. I got no replies at all but only a general brush-off by the Prime Minister when he replied to the debate. I shall come specifically to the point mentioned by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn.
The Prime Minister's last remarks were along the lines of what the hon. Lady has just said. He said:
In view of the kind remarks my hon. Friend"—
he was referring to me—
made about me, as he always does in these matters, I shall make one further reference to him. He referred to 'hangers on' of the Royal Family
I did not refer to them at all, but that is by the way.
I doubt whether there is anyone better rewarded or who is a greater beneficiary from the existence of the monarchy—I would not wish to be so offensive as to refer to a 'hanger on'—through his writings than my hon. Friend."—[Official Report, 4th December 1975; Vol. 901, cc. 1983, 2016.]
Those remarks, delivered in that manner, reveal more about the Prime Minister than they do about me. At least I had the honesty to put in my declaration of Member's interests the fact that I was getting royalties from the only book I have ever written. I tell the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn that she had better find out what is happening to that money.

Mrs. Ewing: I have asked.

Mr. Hamilton: If she makes that statement outside the House, I shall take action against her.

Mrs. Ewing: Answer the question.

Mr. Hamilton: I hope that I am answering. I hope that I am answering the Prime Minister too. His attack on me came at a stage in his speech when it could not be answered, which was unbecoming of a Prime Minister or any other Minister speaking of one of his own supporters. However, I want to put the question again.
As I understand it, there is to be no statutory requirement on the Royal Trustees to present an annual report. I do not know why that is, unless it is to conceal something. As I have said, the Prime Minister told the House that any further increases in provision should be subject to normal House of Commons Supply procedure. Does that cover annuitants? As I understood it, later in his speech the Prime Minister said that the Queen herself would provide £150,000 a year out of her own income towards the expenses of the Civil List for 1975, and I think that the figure is currently estimated to be £120,000.
The implication is that this House will not be informed whether any increase has been given to the annuitants who are now covered by the Civil List Acts. Does that mean that we shall not be able to ascertain what the annuitants will be getting?
The hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Dean) claimed in that debate that the Bill was bringing the matter into the public arena. Far from doing that, however, it will make it more and more secretive. In the early stages of the Civil List, virtually no evidence was taken by Select Committees. Hardly any information was made public. This House was scarcely aware of the reasons for increases in Civil List expenditure. It was only in 1971–72 that a Select Committee decided to take evidence, publish it and present it to the House. That Committee also decided, however, against my vote, that there would never be another such Select Committee but that instead we would have these reports by the Royal Trustees annually and that an Order would be laid by the Government and could be debated. Now we are to be deprived of those annual reports and we are, therefore, receding into secrecy.
I do not believe that any institution of this country ought to be shrouded in


mystery. Public money is involved, and we should be able to ask questions and to scrutinise every penny of public expenditure. Clause 1 is a move in the opposite direction. That is why I seek to delete it and to reinsert the provisions of the 1972 Act.

The Minister of State, Treasury (Mr. Denzil Davies): The amendment seeks to retain the requirement that the Royal Trustees shall report more frequently than once in every 10 years. It would have this effect despite the provision in Clause 1(1) allowing additional payments to be made from Votes, because the Consolidated Fund provision of the 1972 Act would be insufficient, of itself, to meet Civil List expenditure in any year.
Traditionally, provision for the Civil List has been made at the beginning of a reign and has continued for the duration of that reign. The provision in 1952. for instance, lasted for 17 years. It was the Select Committee's intention that the revised arrangements made in 1972 should last for between five and 10 years. As amended, the 1972 Act will therefore require the Royal Trustees to report at least once in every 10 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) takes exception to that period, but I think that most hon. Members would agree with the Government that it is reasonable.
I want to set my hon. Friend's mind at rest. This procedure does not mean that there will be no opportunity to debate these matters at more frequent intervals. It will be possible for every hon. Member to pursue any particular point under the normal Supply procedure. This is because the payments to be made to the Royal Trustees under Clause 1(1) will be subject to the normal Supply procedure in the House, in the same way as any other expenditure.
In addition, payments by the Royal Trustees will be audited by the Auditor of the Civil List—I hope that this meets my hon. Friend's point—and a statement of these payments will be appended to the Appropriation Account at the end of the year. Full information, therefore, regarding supplementary payments will be available at annual intervals. Actual expenditure will be detailed in the Appropriation Account after it has been incurred, so that hon. Members will be

able to see who spent the money and where it went, and will be able t
to assure themselves that it was not used for private purposes.
We have, therefore, three ways in which these matters can be discussed. We have the normal Supply procedure in relation to extra payments every year, the Appropriation Account and the opportunity to debate the report and, every 10 years, the report of the Royal Trustees. I hope that my hon. Friend does not feel that this is sweeping the matter under the carpet. Knowing his ingenuity and knowledge of our procedure, I am sure that he will fully avail himself of the opportunities. In the circumstances, I feel that we have gone a long way to meet the points that he has made in the past, and with that assurance I hope that he will not press the amendment.

Dr. Alan Glyn: The Minister of State has summed up the matter very well. The whole object of the exercise originally was that the Civil List should last for a reign, but circumstances have changed so much and inflation has raged so high that we have been compelled to find some other method, and this is the method that has been chosen. The period of from five to 10 years is not unreasonable.
The points raised by the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) are well covered, because originally this matter was debatable only at times when the Crown had to ask Parliament for more money. Now, because it is paid for out of public moneys, we can debate it every year. I cannot see why the hon. Member for Fife, Central is objecting. If anything, this makes the matter more liable to scrutiny than ever before. Continual arguments over these matters should be avoided. Let us recognise that the Crown does an extremely good job, and so do all the members of the Royal Family. They are entitled to be remunerated, and I hope the House will not continue to debate these subjects in this way.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: At the moment the House and country know what sums are paid to individual members of the Royal Family. Can the Minister give me an assurance that, in the Appropriation Account or in another way, we shall


be able to follow the trends of the annuities each year? If there is an increase in any annuity, shall we be able to see it?

Mr. Denzil Davies: I can only repeat what I have already told my hon. Friend. Actual expenditure will be detailed in the Appropriation Account and hon. Members will be able to see who was spending the money and where it went, and will be able to assure themselves that it has not been used for private purposes.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause 4

CIVIL LIST SUPPLEMENTARY SUMS AND GOVERNMENT'S INCOMES POLICY

No moneys payable under this Act shall be used for purposes that go beyond the Government's incomes policy.—[Mr. William Hamilton.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. William Hamilton: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
In moving the Second Reading of this Bill last week the Prime Minister indicated that there was nothing in it that infringed the terms of the Government's incomes policy. He pointed out that 75 per cent. of the provision in the Civil List was for the wages of the Royal Household—for gardeners, kitchen-maids and the rest. However, there are a certain number at the top whose incomes have nothing to do with Civil Service rates.
I was in my constituency at the weekend, knocking on doors and hearing about individual cases, as I usually do, and I was asked to call on a working widow who had tax problems. Her situation is not irrelevant to the Bill. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has said that the Bill has to be seen in the context of the fight against inflation in which we are all, more or less, engaged. This widow showed me her pay slip for last month. Her gross

wage was £64, out of which she paid tax of more than £20. Her widow's pension was treated as unearned income.
In the debate last week, the Prime Minister talked some nonsense about somebody giving £150,000 to the annuitants. How can we be sure that the £150,000 will not be distributed in a way that infringes the Government's pay policy? I suggest that it must do so. If we take the number of people involved and divide that figure into £150,000, we find that it comes to well over £6 a week. Unlike the working widow in my constituency, the money for these individuals will be untaxed. They will be getting a substantial increase—well above the pay limits set by the Government—and it will be completely untaxed, because the money will be regarded as a gift from "A" to "B" within the Royal Family. It will not be subject to tax. That was made clear in evidence to the Civil List Select Committee in 1971 in relation to members of the Royal Family who are not annuitants. However, future increases to annuitants will be in the form of a gift from the Queen and will not be subject to the £6 limit or to tax.

Mr. David Howell: No doubt the Minister of State will answer the hon. Member's specific point. He knows that we find his views objectionable, but why does he continue to say something for which we can find very little corroboration in the Report of the Select Committee of which he was a member? The Report said:
These annuities are specifically charged on the Consolidated Fund and are liable to tax in the ordinary way; but the Treasury in the exercise of their statutory powers exempt such part as in their opinion represents a fair equivalent of the average annual amount laid out and expended wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of the duties in respect of which the annuities are payable.
Why does the hon. Member continue to say they are untaxed, when the Select Committee's Report and several other authorities' point out that they are dealt with by the Treasury in the normal way?

Mr. Hamilton: The hon. Member should follow these matters more closely. I agree with what he said to a point. The annuitants specifically mentioned in the Civil List Act are those whose incomes are known. They are 100 per cent. tax-exempt because their earnings are


regarded by the Treasury as wholly incurred expenses. The £35,000 a year received by Princess Margaret is presumed to be all spent on expenses. The same is true of the £35,000 received by Princess Anne and of the Queen Mother, with her £95,000 a year. While in theory these incomes are taxed, in practice they are not taxed.

Dr. Glyn: Surely my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) has explained that the position is no different from that of any other citizen who is able to say to the Inland Revenue This amount of money has been spent on public duties and I am, therefore, entitled to set it against my tax." The expenses of members of the Royal Family in proportion to their income is probably much higher, because they spend their time performing public duties.

Mr. Hamilton: The public at large will form their own conclusion on that. I read regularly every day the Court Circular—it is my favourite reading. If the hon. Gentleman looks at that, he will see how grossly overworked are some members of the Royal Family. Indeed, witnesses before the Civil List Select Committee said that members of the Royal Family incurred in expenses more than they received from annuities. Where do they get that money from? What are they living on if they spend more than the State gives them? There must be something wrong there. I find it difficult to believe that the Queen Mother is spending more than £95,000 on expenses.

The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but he is going beyond the strict terms of the amendment.

Mr. Hamilton: I am sorry, Mr. Thomas, but I was replying to the intervention.
In the Second Reading debate the Prime Minister referred to members of the Royal Family who were not annuitants under the terms of the Civil List Act 1972. At col. 1984 he referred to the Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and others who were provided for by a global sum within the Civil List Act 1972 which the Queen distributed at her discretion. Those people will not get increases pro-

vided for by the taxpayer. The Queen will give a sum which will be distributed among them. Those are the sums to which I am referring. The moneys hitherto provided by Parliament to members of the Royal Family who are not annuitants will increasingly be provided from the Queen's private resources. It is that part of the money which will not be taxed. If the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) will take home with him and read the evidence given to the Civil List Select Committee, he will find that what I say is right. It is stated specifically that that money is in the form of a gift from one person to another. At the time when that report was published Princess Alexandra was getting £20,000 per year as a gift from the Queen—

The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member again, but the clause deals specifically with the moneys payable under the Bill and with nothing else.

Mr. Hamilton: I agree. I am trying at the same time to educate the hon. Member for Guildford and to keep in order. It is difficult to do both. If the hon. Gentleman will take the book home with him and read it tonight, we shall be able to have a chat next week.
The Minister of State must give an undertaking that in no circumstances will anyone in the Royal Household, from the top to the bottom, get more than the current going rate under the Government's incomes policy. The £6 limit has been observed by trade union leaders in an amazing way. The whole country hopes that the policy will work. It stands a much better chance of working if we get a lead from the top. The sort of lead the miners want is a statement that nobody in the Royal Household will get an increase of more than £6 a week and that the Government's incomes policy will be strictly adhered to.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. James Dempsey: When my hon. Friend refers to "nobody", does he include all the household employees of the Royal Family, such as joiners, plumbers, Mrs. Mopps and cooks? If they are included, will my hon. Friend tell me whether he has arrived at any conclusion as to whether the global sum is more than the £6 ceilinghich has been fixed?

Mr. Hamilton: I dare say that the kitchen-maids, chauffeurs and similar employees deserve more than £6 a week, but that is the maximum under the Government's pay policy. It should be the maximum for everyone. My hon. Friend has made a good point. He might have tabled a new clause to provide that anyone employed in the Royal Household earning less than £20 or £30 a week should fall outside the incomes policy and be able to get more than £6 a week.
I am concerned with the people at the other end of the scale. They should be setting an example. After all, they say that they are the unifying force in the nation. They set the moral lead for the nation, and the nation is yearning for that lead to get us out of our difficulties.
I have had shoals of letters in the last week wishing me good luck and more power to my elbow. The Inland Revenue takes one-third of an income of £60 a month, yet we are producing this Bill. I feel that it is a sad commentary on the Labour Government that the first Bill to get on the statute book this Session, in probably the most difficult economic circumstances we have known since the 1930s, should deal with a specially privileged section of the community. It is a scandal and it will not get my support.

Mr. Denzil Davies: I hope that I can set my hon. Friend's mind at rest on the issues he has raised. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said during the Second Reading debate and in February, any increases payable under the arrangements set out in the Bill will be entirely in line with the Government's incomes policy. That policy, however, is a voluntary one, and I think my hon. Friend will agree that it would be inconsistent, to say the least, to seek to apply to the Royal Household statutory restrictions which do not apply to other members of the community.
Wages and salaries in the Royal Household are, wherever possible, closely linked with comparable Civil Service rates, which are themselves negotiated with the Civil Service staff associations and unions. The additional money to be provided through the Royal Trustees will be subject to Government control in the normal way, and the Committee can be assured

that, in so far as the money is required to pay salaries and wages, the amounts will be limited so as to provide the increases approved for comparable grades in the Civil Service.
There are 347 full-time members of the Royal Household, officials and staff who will all be covered in one way or another by the Government's pay policy. Eight members of the Household are linked to Civil Service grades for whom increases were recommended under the Boyle Report. Eighty-three members of the Royal Household are linked to Civil Service grades ranging from typist to assistant secretary. Twenty messengers and domestic staff are linked to Civil Service or National Health Service grades. Two hundred and thirty-six domestic, garage and stable staff and gardeners are without a firm link to Civil Service grades but their pay increases follow strictly the percentage rate of increase to linked staff.
In so far as the expenditure is on wages and salaries, it will be covered by the Government's general counter-inflation policy. We believe that that policy should be voluntary. We do not believe that it would be right—as my hon. Friend seems to suggest—to make it a statutory policy for the employees of the Royal Household.
I ask the House to reject the amendment so that we can apply the voluntary policy to employees of the Royal Household as to other employees. I hope that my hon. Friend is satisfied with my assurance that we are applying the policy equally to employees of the Royal Household as to everyone else.

Mr. William Hamilton: May I press my hon. Friend a little further? Will he give me a categorical assurance that the annuitants will not get more than £6 a week increase in the next 12 months?

Rev. Ian Paisley: There is a point that is disturbing me. It was said that a widow's pension was taxable as unearned income. I understood that it was taxable as earned income. Will the hon. Gentleman elucidate that point?

Mr. Hamilton: I am not sure whether the Minister answered, but in no circumstances whatever should any member of the Royal Household from the top to the


bottom, get more than is allowed within the Government's income policy.

Mr. Denzil Davies: I made it clear that there are 347 full-time members of the Household, officials and staff, and they will all be subject to the controls under the Government's counter-inflation policy.

Mr. Hamilton: Does this include the annuitants? A nod will not be shown in the Official Report. My hon. Friend must get up and say "No".

Mr. Dennis Skinner: As hon. Members will know, I take a somewhat different view from my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) on incomes policy, because I have always taken the view that the people most affected are usually those who can be gathered together at the bottom end of the wages scale. The many other people at the top end cannot be monitored effectively, because nobody really knows what their wages are, as has been indicated in this case. Even if their wages could be monitored by Government officials—countless numbers would be needed for the purpose—the fact is that they get their income also in the form of perquisites of one kind or another, as well as by means of tax relief and so on. This has been amply demonstrated by my hon. Friend in the course of this very short debate.
Whereas I differ from my hon. Friend quite distinctly on the question of incomes policy, which is mainly directed against the people I represent, I am still a little unsure what the Minister is answering in respect of those at the very top end who cannot, in my view, be covered by the Government's present incomes policy or, for that matter, any incomes policy.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Perhaps I may repeat that the payments about which we are concerned in the Bill are in the main payments to members of the Royal Household. The annuitants to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) referred are not members of the Royal Household.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, we are concerned in the main with payments to the Royal Household for wages and salaries, and it is in relation to these payments that we are

debating the clause. The annuitants, I repeat, are not members of the Royal Household. We are concerned in the main with wages and salaries to the Royal Household, and all the members of it, from top to bottom, will be subject to the Government's counter-inflation policy.

Mr. Hamilton: That does not answer my question. The incomes policy either applies to everybody or it does not. The annuitants might not come within the terms of the Bill but the wages policy covers everybody. Perhaps the Minister will risk being out of order and tell me whether the annuitants will be inside the incomes policy or not.

Question put and negatived.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — NORTHERN IRELAND (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS)

7.59 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. John Concannon): I beg to move,
That the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Regulations 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 11th November, be approved.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): This set of Regulations is a very narrow one.

Mr. Concannon: The effect of these Regulations is to require drivers to lock and immobilise unattended vehicles. Failure to do so will constitute a criminal offence under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973 and render the offender liable to imprisonment for up to six months, a fine of up to £400, or both.
The purpose of the Regulations is twofold. First, the measures are part of the Government's campaign to reduce lawlessness in Northern Ireland. In the first nine months of 1975, no fewer than 6,674 motor vehicles were stolen. No doubt many of these thefts were opportunist crimes: young persons finding an


unlocked car succumbed to the temptation to steal it. Many of these might have been prevented. Each theft, moreover, means involvement of police time—which could better be devoted to more serious matters in the circumstances of Northern Ireland at present—as well as distress and inconvenience to the owner.
The second purpose is much more important, and is the reason why these measures are being brought forward in the form of Regulations under the Emergency Provisions Act. In the first nine months of this year, 273 stolen or hijacked vehicles are known to have been used for terrorist-type crimes. If a terrorist in Northern Ireland wishes to shoot members of the other community, he usually steals a car to aid his getaway. If a terrorist wishes to move guns, ammunition and explosives, he usually steals a car. If a terrorist wishes to make a car bomb—one of the most terrifying and appalling manifestations of terrorism arising in Northern Ireland—he invariably steals a car. A stolen car is as important to him as a gun. Anything, therefore, that will make the theft of a car more difficult for the terrorist may save lives and increase the chances of apprehending the terrorist.
It is true, of course, that the experienced car thief operating in ideal conditions will not always be defeated by a locked and immobilised car, but the inexperienced will be deterred by a well-secured vehicle. Even the experts will need considerably more time to bypass a lock and immobilisation device, a factor that will increase the likelihood of his being caught in the act, especially when he is operating in urban surroundings. The immediate effect of the Regulations should be that fewer cars will be stolen and less valuable police time will be spent in recording and tracing stolen vehicles.
Regrettably, the Regulations will impose restrictions on the law-abiding motorist. It is to be hoped, however, that most motorists, particularly in Northern Ireland, will already lock their cars and remove the keys when leaving them unattended. Most cars produced since 1972 have had an immobilisation device fitted as an integral part of the car during manufacture, usually in the form of a steering lock. It is the motorists

with older cars who will be put to the most inconvenience and, perhaps, some expense. They will have to provide a device to immobilise their vehicle, although the Government have tried to minimise the inconvenience and expense by allowing a three-months' period before the immobilisation provision takes effect and by providing that, if a motorist does not wish to purchase a device, he shall be entitled to immobilise his car by removing, say, part of the engine.
The benefits for the community, however, should outweigh the inconvenience and expense. Innocent lives can be saved, as well as valuable police time. In placing these Regulations before Parliament, we are asking the people of Northern Ireland to help the security forces and themselves. I shall now turn to the details of the Regulations.
Regulations 1 and 2 specify the date on which the substantive provisions wilt come into operation and interpret various terms used.
Regulation 3(1) sets out the conditions that must be fulfilled before a motor vehicle may be left unattended. They are that the ignition key should be removed, the doors locked, and any other openings into the vehicle secured to prevent entry, and that the car should be left with the steering locked or otherwise rendered incapable of being taken away.
The first three conditions are precautions that are normally taken by any prudent motorist. Regulation 3(1)(c) is drafted in a way that allows drivers to leave a window or sun roof slightly open in case it is necessary for a child or pet to be left in the car. The only requirement is that access to the vehicle should not be possible as a result.
Regulation 3(1)(d), the immobilisation provision, is novel. It has been widely drafted to cover all types of effective immobilisation devices. These might include steering locks, fuel lead locks, locks applied to the gear box and hidden switches in the ignition system. The motorist will also have the choice of removing part of the engine. It is not the means but the effect which is important.
Although, as I have explained, most modern vehicles are fitted with steering locks, some private motorists and commercial users will need to fit devices to


their vehicles. It would be unreasonable to expect this to be done in every case immediately after the Regulations are made. Regulation 5 therefore provides that the immobilisation provisions contained in Regulation 3(1)(d) shall not come into force until three months after the Regulations as a whole come into operation. All the other provisions come into operation 14 days after the Regulations are made.
Regulation 3(2) defines "unattended". The vehicle is "unattended" if there is not at least one person over 15 years of age in or on the vehicle, or in the immediate vicinity and sight of the vehicle. One person cannot be in attendance of more than one vehicle for purposes of the Regulations. It will not be permissible, therefore, to leave a car unsecured in a car park where someone may technically be in attendance of a vehicle but cannot be regarded as taking care of it. Tradesmen making door—to—door deliveries will not be required to lock and immobilise unless they go out of sight of their vehicle.
Regulation 3(1) enables a driver to leave a vehicle unlocked and immobilised, provided that he has a reasonable excuse for doing so. The onus of proof that there is reasonable excuse lies with the driver. It is not of course possible to specify the precise circumstances in which motorists will consider it necessary to leave their cars unlocked.
Regulation 4 provides for certain exemptions. Vehicles left in locked premises, the keys to which have been taken away, are not subject to the Regulations. Also excluded are vehicles being used by the security forces or for purposes of the other emergency services, and other public service vehicles that are not considered likely to be stolen.
In conclusion, the Government are constantly reviewing their policy in Northern Ireland in the light of the security situation. The measure before the House should be seen as a response to clear indications that car thefts in Northern Ireland are running at an unacceptably high level and that stolen cars play an important part in terrorist crime. As a result of this measure, life for the terrorist will become harder. The security forces' task will become easier.
The Regulations are an illustration of the Government's determination to ensure that the whole community in Northern Ireland is doing everything possible to support the security forces. As such, I commend them to the House.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: As you told us, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Regulations are narrow in scope. They have been clearly explained to the House by the Under-Secretary, and I shall be brief.
I recall that early in the troubles I was staying with friends in County Down. My host on one occasion stopped his car and we alighted to do some shopping. He then locked the car, after some fumbling with his key, and apologised for doing so. He said "We never used to lock our cars in Ulster, but the security authorities have asked us to do so." Times have changed, lamentably, since Northern Ireland was so law-abiding a Province that the Royal Ulster Constabulary was less numerous than the police employed in Grosvenor Square to prevent demonstrators against the Vietnam war from attacking the American Embassy. The present troubles have now lasted longer than either world war.
It is, therefore, surprising that these Regulations have only lately been brought before the House. One would have thought perhaps that measures of this kind would have been introduced long ago. The people of Londonderry, for example—and we are debating in the shadow of the latest heavy bomb explosion on the Limavady Road—have long known that the stolen or hijacked motor vehicle is, as the hon. Gentleman said, as much a terrorist weapon as the bomb. It is used to plant the bomb, to transport the bomber or the assassin, and to enable him to make his escape.
What the people of Londonderry have known for a long time the people of London now know. I hope that the Home Secretary will be aware of the proceedings in the House this evening, because what we are passing this evening may have its application also in Great Britain.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Hear, hear.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: There is one United Kingdom and there is one war on.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Hear, hear.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: The Opposition therefore welcome this necessary but belated measure. We understand, of course, that it will cause some inconvenience and some expense to members of the public. However, because it is, as the Minister said, intended to save lives and to save police time, we must of course give it our support.
I think that all will be glad that the public in Northern Ireland are to be given a further three months before it becomes compulsory to immobilise—as opposed to locking—an unattended vehicle. We should be interested in hearing anything that the Under-Secretary can tell us about the number of stolen, hijacked or unlicensed vehicles believed to be at large in Northern Ireland at present.
It is now some while since I had the privilege of accompanying a special patrol group from Mount Pottinger RUC station in Belfast. A constable who was with us in the vehicle—the "pig"—had stored in his retentive mina the numbers of, it seemed, hundreds of stolen cars. That very evening, before we had been out for more than an hour, the special patrol group was able to retrieve about three stolen or abandoned cars in the streets of the capital city of Northern Ireland. They were, and I believe still are, legion. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us of any progress that has been made in the enforcement of the law in this regard, particularly near the border?

8.8 p.m.

Rev. Ian Paisley: These Regulations are narrow, but the Order that will come after them is not so narrow, and some of the remarks that will be made tonight on the Order will be made in answer to certain strictures that were passed upon hon. Members on this Bench in a previous debate. We shall be hopeful that the Secretary of State, who is charged with putting people in the dock, will answer the question whether Members on this Bench should be put in the dock and what charges he would like to see laid against them—or dissociate himself from the despicable remarks made by an hon. Member—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I cannot understand the hon. Gentleman because we are now discussing the Regulations relating to motor vehicles. We shall have a wide debate on the Order

Rev. Ian Paisley: I am sorry for anticipating that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) might have had a record but for the Unionist Party, which withdrew the charge against him.
We are dealing with a matter that needs our serious consideration. Any step that the Government may take in attempting to stop proxy bombing, to stop the carrying of explosives from one place to another, and anything that could lead to the destruction of life, is to be welcomed on the opposition side of the House. We echo the words of the Opposition spokesman, who has said that it is strange that such Regulations have not been laid before today. That remark applies both to the present Government and to the previous Conservative Government. I see that the Minister is indicating that he is glad that the guilt is laid evenly on both sides of the House.

Mr. James Dempsey: The hon. Gentleman has said that it is strange that these Regulations were not made earlier, but in my view it is strange that the Regulations are necessary. It is strange that so many cars should be left unattended, unlocked and easily accessible. Is there any special reason for this?

Rev. Ian Paisley: I am sure the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) knows that it is not the usual practice for anyone to leave someone in charge of his vehicle. Cars are usually left unattended, and it would be most inconvenient if, when one parked a car, one had to leave someone,
not below the age of fifteen years
in attendance of it.

Mr. Dempsey: But why are vehicles left unlocked?

Rev. Ian Paisley: The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison) made the reason clear. It used to be the custom in Northern Ireland that people generally did not lock their cars, because there was law and order in the community. I am not saying whether


that was a good or bad custom. We do not have law and order in the community now, and therefore we need these Regulations.
I am glad that in laying the Regulations the Government are giving time for those who have to immobilise their cars to be able to do so. Will the Minister assure us that the Regulations will have the widest possible publicity, so that people are forewarned and know the Regulations and conditions.
There are many places in Northern Ireland where people cannot live without the use of a car. I suppose that the controlled zones will still be in operation. I ask the Minister to note that many of the signs in those areas have become dilapidated. In fact, many of them have been used for displaying other posters, including election posters. Sometimes people who go to those areas are not sure whether they are controlled zones or not. They leave their cars and when they return they discover that they have either been blown up or dragged away.
I ask the Minister why the Regulations are limited. I understand that they will not affect
a public service vehicle seating more than twelve persons in addition to the driver.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that many buses seat up to 15 people. Indeed, some seat 20. Those vehicles are most suitable for transporting explosives. Many bombs are placed in churns, and it would be easier to put a churn in a minibus than into the boot of a car. I can understand the Regulations not affecting a bus that seats more than 25 people, but there are many smaller buses that would be ideal for terrorists to steal in order to transport bombs.
Do the Regulations cover motor vehicles on private property? I understand that if a motor vehicle is parked on private property it does not come within the Regulations, because Regulation 4(a) refers to
a vehicle which is left in locked premises".
I am sure the Minister is aware that in garages where vehicles are being repaired it would be difficult to keep to the letter of the Regulations. I should like to see the spirit of the Regulations

kept even with regard to vehicles in garages, but it will be very difficult to apply them to the letter in that respect. Perhaps the Minister will look into this point.
Regulation 3(1) contains the words
the proof whereof shall lie on him.
I understand that the onus is upon the person concerned. Anything that throws the onus of an offence on the person concerned needs to be considered seriously. I know that under certain firearms offences and the Emergency Regulations the onus of proof is not upon the Crown; it is upon the person who is accused of the offence. I draw the Minister's attention to that provision, because it is a departure from common law principles. We are in an emergency situation, but hon. Members must remember that the onus of proof has been placed upon the people concerned.
The Minister will no doubt agree that if Republicans plan a job the hijacked car is usually from a Republican area. If a job is planned by a Protestant paramilitary group, the car is usually, but not always, hijacked from a Protestant area. Everyone agrees that the present spate of bombing is definitely being done by the Provisional IRA. Therefore, will it not be hard to implement these Regulations in areas where there is not normal policing?
Does the Minister consider that the Army should be deployed in these areas, with the task of looking at parked cars and ensuring that they fulfil these Regulations? It would not be practical to say that this is a job for the police, because there are areas in which the police cannot check cars. The present spate of explosions is definitely coming from the Provisional IRA and it is the areas that they frequent that must be kept under strict police scrutiny.
We welcome these Regulations in the fight against terrorism. We trust that the people of Northern Ireland will become acquainted with them by a good publicity campaign from the Government. We hope that the people of Northern Ireland will be able to keep to them. If, by intoducing these Regulations, we save lives, we shall have accomplished something that will be beneficial to all sections of the community.

8.19 p.m.

Mr. Gerard Fitt: Although I have an inherent objection to Emergency Regulations of any description, I fully understand the intention which lies behind these Regulations. It is an attempt to prevent explosions, and if it is successful it could lead to the saving of innocent lives and the further protection of property in Northern Ireland. From that standpoint I certainly have no objections to the Regulations. Indeed, I believe that they may be overdue.
I apologise to the Minister for being absent and unable to hear his opening remarks. However, can he give any indication of how many cars have been hijacked in recent years because of the negligence of their owners? I believe that the RUC would have that record in Northern Ireland. The greatest danger about cars is not the car which is found on the street unattended but the car which is hijacked. Within the last hour I have heard from Northern Ireland that another car bomb has exploded in the middle of Royal Avenue outside the Grand Central Hotel. I am not sure whether the car was driven by an IRA man or by a proxy driver.
I have always regarded those who make use of proxy bombs—persons who hijack cars and force the drivers to take the bombs to their destinations—as despicable cowards for not driving the bombs themselves but forcing innocent persons to take them to their destinations.

Rev. Ian Paisley: And usually holding hostages.

Mr. Fitt: And usually holding hostages as well, yes. I regard such people as despicable cowards, and I should like that message to be conveyed to them.
I have no doubt that whoever was responsible for the assembling of the bomb which went off this evening, for the hijacking of the car and making certain that it got to its destination in Royal Avenue was not unaware of the debate which took place this afternoon—the debate on hanging—and the debate which is to follow this one on the emergency provisions. I suppose that the IRA would regard it as an act of defiance. Had the bomb gone off at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock this afternoon, they might have hoped that it would influence the vote which took

place earlier. That is the mentality of the people with whom we are dealing.
These Regulations, if we use the police and the security forces to enforce them, will involve a big increase in manpower. The police will have another onerous duty thrust upon them. Perhaps the Army will also be used to enforce the carrying out of these Regulations. A great deal of inconvenience will be caused to people in Northern Ireland. However, we are not living in a normal society. There is a war atmosphere in Northern Ireland. I am sure that people right across the political board in Northern Ireland will at least understand the necessity for the introduction of these Regulations. I certainly give my wholehearted support to their introduction.

8.24 p.m.

Mr. McCusker: I do not want to be churlish or argumentative about the Regulations. However, there is a tendency to look at these measures and to assume that there is nothing controversial in them and that, in the circumstances prevailing in Northern Ireland, this is what we must do. While I sympathise with that view, I think we must be critical of these Regulations and see whether we can learn anything from them.
The large bulk of the population in Northern Ireland have for seven years lived in conditions which people in other parts of the kingdom have not experienced. They have tried to behave in a normal fashion, but they have had to forgo some of the basic things which make modern life pleasant. They have forgone the pleasure of driving to the shops to do their shopping, to visit the doctor and to perform other basic services. We are now about to impose something further upon them.
This would have been an excellent idea if it had been implemented three or four years ago, and I think that it is desirable even now. I believe that all hon. Members have sympathy with the objective of the Regulations.
The motor car was and probably still is a major item of equipment in the terrorist's armoury. However, we must bear in mind that the IRA and other terrorist organisations in Northern Ireland have always been pushing back the threshold in


terms of terrorist techniques in the violence which they are waging upon us. Undoubtedly the development of the car bomb was a major weapon for terrorists throughout the world. The car bomb was developed three years ago and its effects can be seen on every street corner and main shopping centre in Northern Ireland. Indeed, we have just heard from the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) that Royal Avenue has been blasted again.
I suggest that we should have been considering this measure when the IRA was in the process of developing the car bomb. Again, however, we appear to be reacting after the event, and this time reacting so far after the event that it might have very little meaning.
As I said in the debate on the Armed Forces Bill yesterday, it was a great comfort to anyone from Northern Ireland who has lived with terrorism for seven years to see the security forces in Great Britain last weekend being one step ahead of the IRA. For the first time in seven year the security forces seized the initiative. They had forward plans, they had taken action and they were able to nip a terrorist activity in the bud. That was the first time in seven years that the security forces had seized the initiative.
These Regulations are not seizing the initiative. Undoubtedly they will help the police in the control of crime generally and reduce the number of car bombings, but this is not seizing the initiative because it is too late.
It could be argued that the car bomb as we have known it is now outmoded. The IRA is probably already coming up with something else. Last weekend the IRA destroyed the last major store in my constituency with another device. The gunmen appear to have perfected the incendiary bomb. With such a bomb they burned down a store worth £2 million and Lurgan has no shopping centre left.
Instead of Regulations restricting people doing their shopping in a normal way, I should prefer an Order which sought to tackle the next stage in the IRA's campaign. We are merely imposing a further penalty on an already penalised law-abiding community. This is a victory not for us but for the IRA.

We have been forced to inflict a further penalty on a law-abiding community. Who will benefit from that?
We are asking the car-owning section of the community, which is least able to bear the cost, to take certain action. We are told that most cars from 1972 onwards will already meet the requirements in the Regulations. However, it is the family man with the small car, perhaps made in the 1960s, who is already suffering the burden of rates, petrol increases and maintenance costs and who requires his car for many essential basic functions, who will have to bear the extra cost of fixing these devices.
I hope that thought is being given to advising the do-it-yourself motorist on how he can immobilise his car. It is not just a matter of removing the rotor arm, because the terrorist will carry a rotor arm with him. I hope that a cheap means can be found and that advice can be given to the average family man on how he can do it.
It must be admitted that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce the Regulations. Mention has already been made of the extra burden on the police. When one comes across a locked car which apparently meets all the requirements, how does one decide that it has in fact been immobilised and that it has a device which locks the steering or cuts off the engine? I spoke to a policeman today who told me that he was all for the Regulations but did not know how he would enforce them. Will the police or traffic wardens do the job, or will extra security patrols do it? It will be very difficult, and many people will be needed.
Under the Regulations, what is meant by "slightly open" in relation to the window of a motor vehicle? If a difference of fractions of an inch means six months in gaol or a fine of £400, "slightly open" will be a very debatable matter. It may depend on whether one is leaving one child or two in the car. On a very hot day conditions in the car may be very different if the window is an eighth of an inch open instead of half an inch or an inch. If the window is left open at all, is not the car exposed to the thief and the terrorist attacker?
Apparently, one can leave the car open and not immobilise it if one has a


"reasonable excuse". What is a "reasonable excuse"?
Milk vans, other delivery vans and commercial vehicles are excluded, provided that the driver is in the immediate vicinity and in sight of the vehicle. When my milkman comes to my house he is only 20 or 30 yards from the road, because of the drive and the level of the road compared with that of the house, but he does not have sight of his van. Is it regarded as being in the immediate vicinity? If he goes next door and leaves the van where it is, is it still in the immediate vicinity even though he probably cannot see it? What happens if he goes to a third house? Where does it end?
It is the milk van and the commercial vehicle that the IRA will use. When IRA men have penetrated the security barriers recently they have done it not with a private car but by taking a commercial vehicle and using it to camouflage their bomb. By excluding that vehicle from the Regulations we are leaving the gate open. The vehicle could be left without being immobilised and the terrorist could steal it without difficulty.
I know that there are problems here. All I am saying is that we should be careful to see that we are not reacting so long after the event that our action is no longer meaningful, and that we are not inflicting more harm on the law-abiding community to no great purpose.
Having been critical, I shall try to convince my constituents that the Regulations are necessary, but we must remember that this is a time of serious economic restraint in Northern Ireland and that we are imposing a burden on the motorists who are least able to bear the extra cost.
A few hours ago the Home Secretary said that he did not wish to have a deterrent which would break in his hand. I should hate to think that tonight we were introducing a deterrent which would break in our hands. Can we enforce the Regulations in Republican areas? Can we check that vehicles in those areas are immobilised? Can we insist that in Newry, Newtown Hamilton, Keady and Armagh, for example, the Regulations are strictly enforced, when people from the Republic can drive backwards and forwards without even being stopped? There is no control in that area. I am

not trying to make a cheap point, but we are inflicting this restriction on a law-abiding community when conditions enable it to be flouted.
These are important matters. The large bulk of the community will accept the Regulations, but only if they see the law being enforced impartially. I hope that the Minister can give us that assurance.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. James Kilfedder: It is wrong to criticise the Government or the previous Government for not introducing the Regulations before. The responsibility is on all of us to moot whatever ideas are sensible for the safeguarding of life and property in the Province. I think that the Regulations have only now been suggested to the Government, who have rightly put this draft before the House. They are not perfect. They are another burden on the law-abiding people of the Province.
We cannot expect these Regulations to put an end to bombings by proxy, nor can we envisage that they will be enforced by the police and the security forces right throughout the Province. All they can do is to bring to the attention of the people that they must secure their cars and deter those who might attempt to take away motor vehicles. On many occasions, as with the proxy bomb tonight in Royal Avenue, Belfast, the terrorists take a vehicle which will not cause suspicion in the minds of the security forces. In tonight's case I think it was a Post Office van. That is obviously the sort of vehicle that the terrorists like to use. On the occasions when they hijack cars they do not always select cars which are locked and stationary but take those which are moving in their area.
A valid point which arises from the debate is the question of the burden of proof. The law rightly recognises that normally the onus is on the prosecution to establish proof, but these Regulations shift the onus to the defendant. How can a citizen who is charged satisfy the burden of proof if he locks his car and a terrorist comes along and uses another key to open the door, gets into the car and drives it away? How can the owner prove that he locked it? That is the point that worries me. I do not know whether the Government have thought out these matters fully, but that is a worrying feature. Many people could be faced


with the prospect of prosecution and found guilty when they are totally innocent. That is a matter to which the Minister might direct his attention.
Having made those comments, I welcome anything that will help to bring back some peace to Northern Ireland. I do not want to engage in any nit-picking in discussing these Regulations.

8.38 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: In ordinary circumstances the Regulations would be highly objectionable, because they make it a crime to endanger one's own property. Normally, the sanction against those who fail to secure their cars properly is that their failure increases the risk of the cars being lost, and, in due course, increases the insurance premium. However, in this instance there is the decisive consideration that it is not the interests of the owner of the car which is the basis of the crime but the fact that by being careless of his own property he is endangering third parties. It is that consideration which entitles us to make criminal his carelessness with his own property.
A point which is very much a matter of presentation, and which I stress in the presence of the Minister, has arisen from a number of speeches, namely, that at best the Regulations can have only a partial effect upon the use of cars in terrorist activities. It will undoubtedly make the stealing of cars for terrorist purposes somewhat less frequent than might otherwise be the case. It will impose a limitation or a delay, and to that extent it will be beneficial, but I suggest that it will be unwise for the Government to promote the publicity for this new law in terms that suggest that a tremendous blow will thereby be struck against terrorism by the ordinary citizen. The Regulations are very modest in their possible effect, and it is always bad propaganda and bad publicity to exaggerate the significance and effect of what one is doing.
I stress that the more because my only other point is to invite the Minister to go into more particulars of the methods to be adopted to bring the new requirements to the attention of the public. It occurs to me that the Minister could arrange, in all car parks, for the display of notices with the full particulars of the

requirements as a matter of course. In addition, the display of notices would be appropriate in streets and areas where cars are normally parked.
This applies equally to the man who leaves his own car in his own drive or garage. Nevertheless, the authorities can get at those activities only by the use of other forms of publicity. I suggest that it will be damaging to whatever benefit can be got out of this exercise if the citizen in breach of the Regulations can with some plausibility argue that such a matter has not effectively been drawn to his attention and that he has not been reminded of the Regulations relating to circumstances in which he is likely to leave a car unattended.
I hope that the Minister will be able to cover those two points regarding publicity to be given to the new law.

8.41 p.m.

Mr. Concannon: With the leave of the House, I should like to reply to the debate.
I should like first to thank hon. Members for the general welcome given to the Regulations. We all appreciate that these provisions arise only in emergency conditions under the relevant legislation.
I was asked who will be responsible for policing the Regulations. This will be carried out under the emergency provisions legislation covering the activities of Armed Forces in Northern Ireland. I emphasise that we have not taken this action without full consultation with those concerned. However, I assure the House that the authorities involved look forward to the enactment of this legislation.
I was asked about publicity. We shall, of course, be giving full publicity to these provisions, although we are not holding them out as a panacea for all ills.

Mr. Fitt: The provisions will lessen the civil and democratic rights of people in Northern Ireland. Would it be an expensive matter for the motor taxation authorities in Northern Ireland to send out publicity documents relating to these Regulations in order to inform the public of the situation?

Mr. Concannon: We shall examine any suggestion in this respect. We have a period of three months and two weeks before the immobilisation procedure


comes into force. We have already begun our publicity campaign through the Press and we shall also use television and other forms of communication in Northern Ireland.
We must try to keep these matters in perspective. I repeat that these steps have been taken only after consultation with the relevant bodies. It would be wrong to say that there is no opinion to the contrary. Certainly the haulage contractors and the trade unions have put on record their dislike for certain aspects of the Regulations. We have to meet these people and persuade them to accept our views. We have discussed this with the police and the Army.
In 1972, 9,659 vehicles were stolen in Northern Ireland. In the following year the number had been reduced to 5,496. In 1974, the figure was 5,700 and up to 31st October this year the figure is 6,674. We could not bring in these Regulations unless we had public support in Northern Ireland. The time is now opportune. We hope that as many people as possible will agree with us on this matter.
I was asked how many cars had been stolen on the roads of Northern Ireland. The identification procedures speed up protection and work quickly. This is a security matter, and I do not want to go into it. I shall certainly take on board the point about controlled zones. I have been trying to deal with other signs for those zones but have had little success so far.
We have to draw the line somewhere in relation to the point made about the 12-seater minibus. We have always to bear in mind the security situation. The courts will have to decide in many instances, as the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) said, and will have to interpret certain of these actions. This is not a panacea. I thank hon. Members for giving the Regulations the response that they have.

Mr. Kilfedder: Perhaps the Minister will write to me and deal with the situation in which a person has left a car locked and secure. Anyone could tamper with a vehicle that has been left unattended. The window could be forced open for the purpose of stealing from the car, or the thief could attempt to drive

the car away. Someone could use a key to open the car door and then be unable to move the car. What about the unfortunate owner of the vehicle? He could well be prosecuted. He would have no defence. Will the Minister examine that aspect?

Mr. Concannon: The onus of proof is on the car owner who parks the car, Regulation 3(1)(d) states that the steering mechanism has to be immobilised and that the car itself has to be immobilised. The onus of proof is on the car owner. The interpretation will have to be left to the courts. I know how well solicitors and others tackle these problems in Northern Ireland. We must convince the general public of the need for this measure and demonstrate to them that their cars should be locked up while unattended. If we can, we shall be doing a great service to the car owner and to the population in Northern Ireland. As a result, we hope that there will be fewer bombs and less slaughter.
I know that there will be problems. These Regulations will not solve all the problems in one fell swoop, but they will make the life of these thugs and terrorists more difficult and that of our security forces easier.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Regulations 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 11th November 1975, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.

Orders of the Day — NORTHERN IRELAND (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS)

8.50 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Merlyn Rees): I beg to move,
That the Northern Ireland (Various Emergency Provisions) (Continuance) (No. 2) Order 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 27th November, be approved.
We are seeking the approval of the House for the renewal of the temporary provisions contained in three Acts—the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1973, the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) (Amendment) Act 1975 and the Northern Ireland (Young Persons) Act 1974.
The 1973 Act contains powers for dealing with terrorism. The provisions affect the mode of trial—for example, the absence of juries for the trial of scheduled offences; evidence—for example, the reversal of the onus of proof over the possession of firearms; and the powers of the police and the Army—for example, powers of arrest and search. The Act also incorporates the provisions for detention which were previously enacted by Order. Most of the provisions have continued unchanged since 1973. Some provisions were amended and others added by the 1975 amendment Act. In particular, the detention provisions were significantly recast following the report of the Gardiner Committee.
The Northern Ireland (Young Persons) Act 1974 provides a temporary power for the Secretary of State to give a direction for a young person to be kept in remand in prison to prevent his escape or to ensure his safety or the safety of others. The provision is necessary, as facilities outside prison in Northern Ireland were not designed to contain young persons who are determined to escape, particularly if outside help is forthcoming. There was a deal of that at the time the Act was passed. Although I have not made a direction since this provision was last renewed, I would not wish, yet, to see the power lapse. I understand that the courts are providing for far more remand to prison under this legislation.
The Order provides that the temporary provisions in all these Acts should continue in force for a further six months, from 25th January 1976.
We still need emergency powers in Northern Ireland. Violence continues, although, as I have said on many occasions, its nature has changed. We must, however, recognise the reality of the situation in Northern Ireland. Paramilitary organisations of various shades are a fact of life there, and these terrorist brigades and battalions, with quasi-military command structures and trappings. Their real significance, however, lies in the fact that nearly 1,400 people have been killed in Northern Ireland since 1969; that over £130 million compensation has been paid in respect of bombing attacks which, although much reduced in 1975, are still commonplace; that sectarian murders are rife, and that young

children are killed on the streets. Not only is Northern Ireland different politically from the rest of the United Kingdom; it is very different indeed in the nature of its violence.
I come now to detention. I have explained on several occasions my reasons for releasing the remaining detainees. From the outset, detention has been a real and continuing cause of resentment, particularly in the minority community. It was a fertile ground for recruitment to the paramilitary organisations. Although detention played an important part in dealing with organised violence and breaking up the paramilitary structures, it did not end violence. From June 1973 until January 1975, there were never fewer than 500 persons detained. All of us know the scale and horror of the violence that continued during that period.
Let us not forget, either, that releases from detention are nothing new, whether by the Secretary of State or, until August, by the Commissioners. That is because it is implicit in the legislation. Even more implicit is the fact that detention is for a short period. A total of 809 persons were released in 1972, 208 in 1973 and 361 in 1974. Some of those released have returned to active terrorism, but, of over 2,000 persons released since August 1971, only just over 100 have subsequently been charged with terrorist-type offences.
I discovered on reading Hansard recently that in a debate on 25th November 1971, after a visit to Long Kesh and Crumlin Road, and only a few months after internment, as it was, had been introduced, I said:
I feel that the key is internment. Whoever one talks to in the minority group in Ulster, one can be in no doubt that since internment the political situation has changed radically. Internment has hardened attitudes."—[Official Report, 25th November 1971; Vol. 826, c. 1661.]
I went on to say that internment was a turning point in Northern Ireland and that, whatever happened, things would never be the same again until that aspect had been dealt with.
I have felt that all along. I have never, in all these years, however, whether on the passage of legislation or signing interim custody orders myself—as I did last year—burked the issue that in some


circumstances detention is the only course available to us. If there is a recurrence of widespread violence I would not hesitate to use the powers of detention again, but the responsibility would then lie clearly on the men of violence. The chance has been given, internment and detention have been used politically in Northern Ireland. The responsibility lies now not here at Westminster or at Stormont but with the people concerned.
In Northern Ireland too many people are guilty of double thinking. They appear to believe that some crimes can be justified—indeed, that they are not crimes at all—because they are committed with some allegedly political motive in mind. It is only necessary to list some of the crimes which have been committed to be disabused of the notion of any political motive. That is why I announced to the House that I would make a start next year with the phasing out of special category status for new entrants.
Earlier this year a child of 7, herding animals in a country lane, was blown to pieces by a land mine planted by the Provisional IRA. Recently the Provisional IRA was responsible also for the murder of a child of 6, shot dead in a wild burst of gunfire aimed at her father. In July, three men driving home from a dog show in the Republic were stopped on the open road and motivelessly murdered. Also in July this year, the Miami Show-band were ambushed and three out of the four of them shot and killed by members of the UVF armed with sub-machine-guns. In August, a council workman—a Protestant who volunteered to assist in the repair of bomb-damaged homes in the Catholic Lower Falls—was beaten to death by a Provisional IRA gang. So violence continues in Northern Ireland.
Hon. Members will know of the successes that have been achieved this year by the security forces—the police assisted by the Army. Good progress in combating the evils of sectarian murder and gangsterism has been made on both sides of the community. Many people are being charged and brought before the courts for serious crimes. A total of 149 people were charged in November alone.
Charges for murder and attempted murder have shown a dramatic increase.

This year, 135 people have been charged with murder, compared with 75 in the whole of 1974. In the last two months alone, some 40 people have been charged with murder; only a dozen or so were charged over the same period last year. No fewer than 318 travelling gunmen have been apprehended and charged, and many of these people must be regarded as potential murderers. What I should emphasise to the House is that the number of convicted prisoners in Northern Ireland is 2,260 this year, compared with 1,748 at the end of last year—an increase of 512. More people are going to prison—they are not in detention; they have been convicted—and that is what the Government want to achieve.
In the White Paper on the Northern Ireland Constitution in July 1974, the Government made it clear that nothing would transform the security situation more quickly than a determination by the whole community to support and co-operate with the police service. With the release of the remaining detainees, I have removed what has been seen as the most intractable obstacle to community support.
Our aim now is to ensure that the police progressively assume full responsibility for the maintenance of law and order. The Army does a magnificent job in Northern Ireland. My praise must be unstinting for the way in which our troops carry out their most difficult rôle. But, however well they do their work, the Army in the longer-term is no substitute for the police. It has always been the aim of the Government to achieve a planned, orderly and progressive reduction in the commitment of the Army as the police assume once more their full r·le. This is still the aim and policy of the Government, and our actions, whether they be the moves that I announced in September 1974 to strengthen the police, or the ending of detention and the emphasis on proceeding through the courts, have been taken to this end.
The RUC is the principal guardian of law and order in Northern Ireland. It is the duty of the RUC to enforce the law. The Government support the police in every way they can, but the RUC is as independent of political interference as any police force in Great Britain. In his operational judgments, the Chief Constable is independent of me. His


responsibilities are derived from the law, and he is answerable to the law. He is an agent neither of central nor of local government. Sometimes, in the discussions which take place and are taking place now, I find it difficult to understand what is meant by "control of the police". The Chief Constable is an agent neither of central nor of local government. As I have said before in this House, that is the way that it should be and the way that it must continue to be. There can be no question of any Government's putting pressure on the Chief Constable to act other than according to his own judgments in the discharge of his own responsibilities.
There has been much speculation, gossip and mischievous rumour about the Chief Constable of the RUC. Some of the more malicious rumours have alleged that I have taken steps to remove the present Chief Constable from office, and that I have been motivated to take these unspecified steps because he has been obstructive.
First, let me defend the person who is unable to defend himself. Sir Jamie Flanagan, the Chief Constable, has always carried out his duties efficiently—I use the word advisedly, as it is only on the ground of inefficiency that I could require the Chief Constable to retire, by law. He has co-operated to the full in policies that I have initiated. There has been no dispute. There is no question of deals.
I see in the newspapers a report that starts off correctly enough by saying:
The Northern Ireland Office is blamed by politicians for exerting undue pressure on the police authority.
That is correct, but the writer does not know what he is talking about, because he goes on:
Earlier this year the Chief Constable refused to implement certain points widely supposed to form part of a cease-fire deal with the Provisional IRA.
That is rubbish.
He is reported to have rowed with Mr. Rees over a suggestion that certain PIRA or Sinn Fein leaders should be issued with firearm certificates or that the incident centres should be allowed to deal with local crimes.
That is even bigger balderdash. It causes the Chief Constable and me great amusement at the way this sort of rubbish

percolates round and gets into the newspapers.
Sir Jamie also opposed the scaling down of troops in Republican areas as their presence is necessary to enable the RUC to carry out its already limited functions in the Roman Catholic ghettoes"—
the number of troops is the same—
… and made it quite clear to me that there would be no immunity from arrest for Provisional leaders like Seamus Twomey, their chief of staff.
That is a curious twist to the story. Earlier this year, it was the other way round.
At the time, what people who ought to have known better misunderstood was that under the law I decide who shall be ICO-ed. I do not decide who shall be arrested. No one in the security forces is under any illusion about that, and never has been. That sort of rubbish does not cause alarm and despondency amongst the security forces; it causes a great deal of laughter at functions of the security forces, which I attend nearly every night of the week.
What sort of place is this that this sort of rubbish can go on day after day? Mr. Paddy Devlin, of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, has been speaking up in favour of the Chief Constable, so I got hold of a newspaper of two years ago and found that Mr. Devlin then said that Mr. Flanagan's appointment was disastrous. Mr. Devlin said that the new Chief Constable had been a part of the police hierarchy when all the deficiencies of the force were manifest and that he had never raised his voice in protest or made an impression on any incident in which he was involved. He said that the Chief Constable did not possess the characteristics needed to pilot the changes so desperately needed in the RUC.
So in the last two years there has been a transmogrification in Sir Jamie Flanagan. The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) has referred to his appointment as outrageous. He said the British Government had made no attempt whatever to consult the new Assembly members on the matter. He said he would raise the matter at the next meeting of the Assembly.

Rev. Ian Paisley: The right hon. Gentleman should know that I repudiated that Press statement, and I have told Sir Jamie Flanagan that I have made no comment- on his appointment.

Mr. Rees: I am pleased to withdraw what I said. Much nonsense is being talked. It seems to me that we have been both treated the same way. The hon. Member complains about a report in the Press and I am complaining about reports in the Press. In this case we are treated equally, but things are sometimes different.
The statutory position of the appointment of the Chief Constable is quite clear. He is appointed by the police authority, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, in the same way as are chief constables in Great Britain. The police authority has advertised the post in the same way as in Great Britain and has sought professional advice from the Inspectorate through my Department, in the same way as in Great Britain. This is still awaited.
When the present Chief Constable was appointed he expressed a wish that his tenure should not continue beyond 1975. I understand that the Police Authority has asked him to continue in office until a successor has been appointed, and that he has agreed. That is the position. It is quite clear, and I have no role to play in this. I would not want one. It is vitally important that the police should be outside political control, because at one time there was general talk in Northern Ireland that the position was different. It is important that there should be no illusion in talking about the future Government in Northern Ireland. There is some concern and fear among the police about what might happen in the future. It is important that I should stick to the rules, and I do.

Mr. McCusker: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that I speak not as someone who has made any comment on this matter but as someone who has a high regard for Sir James Flanagan. I believe that he is the man for the job. If he is fit and able to do the job, could he not be asked if he would be prepared to accept an extension of his term of office?

Mr. Rees: It is not for me to ask. I am sure that the Police Authority will be told what people have said. It must be a matter for the Authority. My function does not enter into the matter, and it would be wrong for me to try to interfere.

Mr. James Dempsey: This is an important point. I am a regular listener to Radio Ulster and I heard it report that my right hon. Friend was pressurising the Chief Constable to retire prematurely. I am glad to hear the statement that he has just made. I hope that he will make the situation clear to Radio Ulster.

Mr. Rees: I have made my point clear, not for the first time. But once a rumour gets around it is difficult to stop it. If I believed half the things I heard about other people in Northern Ireland—but perhaps I had better keep them for my memoirs.
I have spoken of the support for the security forces that is forthcoming from the community in Northern Ireland. For success the Government also need co-operation from outside the Province. As the House knows, I have maintained close contact with the Irish Government. The two Governments have a common interest in dealing with terrorism. Continual progress is being made in preventing the supply of explosives reaching terrorists. Co-operation between the police forces north and south of the border has never been closer.
I am confident that the Irish Government are fully aware of the relevance of the border to violence against civilians and against members of the security forces in areas like Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh and South Armagh. They know of the incidents in which shots have been fired across the border at members of the security forces, and of the times in which mines and booby traps have been left for our patrols in the North, with command wires and firing points in the Republic. They also know that terrorists have operated against us from bases in the South. I appreciate the efforts that the Government of the Republic are making to help us bring all this to an end.
This co-operation is vitally important. I hear nothing but praise from the RUC for the co-operation it gets from the Garda in the South. Despite Press reports to the contrary, what I have said is the case. I have responsibility for many things, but I am glad to say that I do not have responsibility for the Press of Northern Ireland, let alone the Press of the rest of the country.
Law and order is only a part of the story, however. We have also done everything possible to ensure that grievances are remedied. In a society in which divisions between communities have been as sharp as in Northern Ireland, and have led to such distrust of the law and of the fairness of the State's activities, it is particularly necessary that the rights of the individual should be properly protected and that this should be seen on all sides to be so. Such an attitude is part of our heritage in Great Britain, but, unfortunately, it is not accepted generally in Northern Ireland.
There is in Northern Ireland today a wide range of measures designed for the protection of human rights. Much had already been done before direct rule was imposed in 1972. I am thinking particularly of the establishment of the Parliamentary Commissioner and the Commissioner for Complaints, whose job it is to guard the citizen against cases of maladministration respectively by central and local government. I wish more people would use this machinery.
The Conservative Government added further protection through the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973, which specifically outlaws discrimination in legislation or executive acts on either religious or political grounds. It also set up the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights to review the adequacy of the law in preventing discrimination on these grounds.
The present Government have taken matters further. We have followed the work done by our predecessors and have introduced the Fair Employment Bill, which will protect the citizen against discrimination in employment in the private sector as well as in the public domain. I know that there is disagreement on some aspects of this measure, and no doubt it will be aired in the House—early, I expect, in the new year.
We have given the Human Rights Commission, under Lord Feather's chairmanship, all encouragement in its present far-ranging study to determine whether a Bill of Rights is desirable for Northern Ireland. I have also announced my intention to introduce an independent element into the procedure for investigating complaints against the police and I hope in the very near future to have the report

of the working party considering the matter. I shall then lay appropriate legislation before the House. I remind the House that the Gardiner Committee praised the procedures of the RUC with regard to complaints under the existing system. I list these measures simply to demonstrate that a great deal has been done over the last five years. Whatever complaints were being made four or five years ago, they can no longer be laid in Northern Ireland.
Unquestionably, the dominant feature of this year has been the large number of interfactional and sectarian murders. My hon. Friends and I live with the statistics given to us at security meetings. Perhaps I should interpret these words for the House. I mean Catholic killing Catholic, as in the PIRA/OIRA feud, or Protestant killing Protestant, as in the case of the UVF/UDA feud. By sectarian murders, I mean the killing of a Catholic by a Protestant or of a Protestant by a Catholic. Sadly, and all too frequently, this has meant the callous murder of a workmate or of a member of some innocent family. Interfactional and sectarian murders have loomed larger than usual in the past year. Let me make it absolutely clear that the security forces have the fullest support from the Government in everything they have done to catch these people, who are sick in mind and are simply killing their fellow citizens for no purpose whatsoever.
There are so many horrible things I remember. I think of the friend of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt)—Senator Paddy Wilson—who was killed two years ago. I think of what was done to him and what had happened to him when he was found. I think of the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) coming to see me some months ago, telling me of a constituent, killed on the border, whose face had been obliterated so that his family would not recognise him in his coffin. It is sick. Political ideals of the past? No, it is pure bloody murder by people who have forgotten what they were doing in the first instance.
There are some grounds for believing that the paramilitary organisations on both sides are beginning to realise that these killings bring nothing but discredit to them and that they should stop. The


feud in West Belfast did no good to any of them.
It would be a major step forward if these paramilitary organisations were willing to make a public declaration of intent that interfactional and sectarian murders would stop. It is public declarations of intend of this kind that could mark the beginning of a real transformation. Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not implying for a moment that they should turn to other forms of crime. I am determined that crimes of any kind should be rigorously pursued through the courts. What I would say is that there is real scope for the energies within these organisations to be directed towards the political, economic and social progress that is so badly needed in Ulster.
There is no doubt that in the early part of the year there was a significant falling off in violence from the Provisional IRA. As I told the House earlier in the year, a number of outrages then were committed by the IRSP, and these have subsequently been publicly admitted through the so-called National Liberation Army—one of its aliases. In the latter part of the year, the Provisionals have, in a number of areas, returned increasingly to acts of violence rather than follow a more constructive course, despite their saying in public that the time was coming when they would stand for elections in all parts of Ireland. Another bomb in Royal Avenue will greatly endear them to the Protestant population in East Belfast. It is the most curious form of electioneering that I have ever known, and it happens on both sides.
If all, or even the majority, of the paramilitary organisations were prepared to make public declarations of intent of the kind I have indicated, the meaningless loss of life would diminish. The senseless killing of people who have every right to live, work and bring up their families in Ulster would stop. This killing has advanced no one's cause one iota. All that it does is to sentence to death a number of the very people whom the paramilitary organisations claim to be protecting. A murder on one side has meant, and will mean, a murder on the other. A bomb on one side will sprout either a bullet or a bomb on the other side, depending on the circum-

stances of the time. If the killing starts again, everyone will know clearly who is committing these mindless acts of violence. What I ask all the paramilitary organisations and fringe groups to remember is that the killing and wounding of innocent people is a crime against humanity, for which responsibility lies solely upon them.
If the Provisionals return to violence on the scale of the period from 1972 to 1974 there will be an inevitable counter-reaction. If the Loyalist paramilitary organisations, some of which arose in response to the PIRA campaign, kill Catholics, then, equally, there will be a counter-reaction. In either case it is a senseless descent into criminality. They should think deeply about what I am saying. In this situation, one act of mindless violence could trigger off a chain reaction.
It has been suggested that the problems in Ulster could be solved by saying that we would withdraw over a period of years. This is what the Provisionals mean when they ask for a declaration of intent. Indeed, it seems to be what one of the major parties in the Republic is also saying. I am firmly of the view that any such statement would be desperately dangerous. I am certain that any such statement would lead to an immediate outburst of violence on a scale that we have not yet seen. It would be motivated by fear on both sides. If such a declaration—which sounds so easy to some—were made in the morning, I would not give twopence for what would happen in Belfast before the afternoon was out.
It is easy to make these statements from a distance, but responsibility lies in the House, because Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. I am equally certain that outrages in this country, and the killing of soldiers and policemen in Northern Ireland, do nothing whatsoever to bring any solution nearer.
I believe that progress in Northern Ireland must be made by the Ulster people. The simple fact is that there is a Protestant majority in Ulster and a large Catholic minority. It is only when the politicians and the people in both these communities declare their intention to live and work together that real progress will be made. What are needed


also, as I said earlier, are declarations of intent by the paramilitary organisations.
This debate has been about security and, increasingly, about criminality. We must return very soon to the constitutional and political problems of Northern Ireland, and all I would say about this tonight is that the Government will be putting their views before this House early in the new year. Meanwhile, we still need to renew the temporary provisions in the Acts that I described at the beginning of my speech.

9.23 p.m.

Mr. Airey Neave: The House must fully support the Secretary of State in his vehement denunciation of the latest outrages which have taken place today and during the past few months. As he said, emergency powers are still needed in Northern Ireland. It is horrifying to think that 1,400 people have been killed since 1969 in circumstances of great brutality. The right hon. Gentleman rightly described those events as foul murders which should not be glorified in any political sense.
I support what the Secretary of State said about withdrawal. The Opposition take the same view as the Government on this matter. We believe that the Armed Forces must remain in strength in support of the civil power until normal policing can be restored throughout the Province. Those are the words of the Secretary of State which the Conservative Party also has been using during the last few months. We believe that it would be dishonourable for a lawful, democratic Government to shirk their duty to uphold the law in all parts of the United Kingdom. There can be no question of the withdrawal of United Kingdom troops from any part of the United Kingdom.
The Secretary of State has given a full explanation of the Order. I shall not detain the House for long because hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies wish to speak on their special aspects of this tragic problem.
We support the Order, just as we supported the three principal Acts as amended. I shall none the less make a few comments in addition to what I said on that occasion. These powers are no doubt essential to enable the Secretary of

State to restore order and uphold the rule of law, but, as I said on Third Reading, it is the way in which the powers are operated that is really important.
The Secretary of State referred to detention, and he is aware that one of my reasons for opposing the release of detainees from detention in the past few weeks was that there might be difficulties in getting evidence for convictions. I know that the Secretary of State passionately believed that detention without trial should come to an end. I hope he will accept that there are others who were apprehensive about what might happen if he took this action. I shall say no more about that except to remind the right hon. Gentleman that in a Written Answer to one of my hon. Friends he referred to the number of internees and detainees released since August, 1971. This was in a Written Answer of 9th December. Of those persons, 108 have subsequently been charged with terrorist-type offences. That is 5 per cent. I simply note that. It may prove important in the future.
The Secretary of State also said that, now that detention has been brought to an end, the responsibility lies with the people of Northern Ireland in the future, and he mentioned in particular the minority community. I agree with what he says, but it lies with Her Majesty's Government as well, and I am sure that they accept the responsibility. It should not in any way be thought that that is not the case.
I turn now to one or two other points concerning the question of getting convictions. This should be further examined. The Government have in recent weeks given us very substantial figures of offenders being dealt with by the courts. On 4th December the Secretary of State mentioned a figure of 1,260 going through the courts this year. That is a very big figure indeed. I assume that this includes all types of terrorist activity.
On 10th December there was a Written Answer to the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) to the effect that 207 directions were issued for the prosecution of persons alleged to belong to the Irish Republican Army between 8th August 1973 and 30th November 1975.


The end of the answer was that following these directions, prosecutions had been completed in respect of 187 persons.
If the Minister of State is to say anything in winding up, will he tell the House how many people during that period were convicted of that offence and how many were charged with that offence alone, as distinct from any other terrorist-type offence? I think that that is important. It has bothered many people.
Now that legal opinion appears to reject the procedures employed in the South of Ireland, where evidence of membership given by a senior police officer is admitted—this has been debated several times in the House—what will now be done about the numbers of persons who admit that they are members of an illegal organisation? I believe that many of those released from detention have admitted their membership. What is to happen now? I asked the Minister of State this question on 8th December.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I do not wish to help anybody as to ways of avoiding a court charge arising from admitted membership. On the question of self-identification within the prisons—whether a person has been convicted or otherwise—I am advised very strongly that this is not regarded as firm evidence of membership. The element of time comes into it. It is possible to say that someone is a member of a political party here and then to find that membership has lapsed, or something of that kind. It is very difficult to get evidence of that nature. Having said that, I should be very happy to talk about it to the hon. Gentleman, because I have looked at it.

Mr. Neave: I should like to discuss this matter with the Secretary of State on another occasion because there are members of the public who are concerned that persons released from detention or persons who are abroad at present are admitting membership of organisations which are proscribed. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for what he said and I should like to talk to him further about what should be done about this matter.
I should like to ask one or two further questions. Is the Secretary of State satisfied—I raised this matter in July on Third Reading of one of the three principal Acts

—that the intimidation of witnesses to which he referred in July is no longer a serious problem? Is the situation improving in any way? This is important in regard to future enforcement of the law in Northern Ireland. What steps are being taken to protect witnesses in regard to their security in giving evidence and to the disclosure of their addresses? Has there been any further progress on that point? We attach considerable importance to this, because if it is right to say that detention should end and that the due legal process through the courts is correct the question of evidence and witnesses is obviously extremely important.
On the same point about proscribed organisations, will the right hon. Gentleman consider the strengthening of Section 9 of the principal Act and possibly making membership of a proscribed organisation part of the list of scheduled offences in the Act? That might be a way of strengthening the position.
I have two more points to make which are fairly important. The Opposition would like to have further conversations on the question of the offence of terrorism which was recommended by the Gardiner Committee. This matter was debated in the House earlier today, but it was a view that we urged on the Government during the debates on the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act. In the light of additional opinion from the first annual report of the Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, of which the Government may be aware, would the Secretary of State be prepared to have discussions on the question whether an offence of terrorism could be created in Northern Ireland?
I was delighted, as we all were, by the great tribute which the Secretary of State paid to the Army. I hope that progress will be made in South Armagh in arresting those responsible for the recent murders. Will the Secretary of State say what progress is being made in finding the people who carried them out?
My final comments are about Sir Jamie Flanagan, who has made a deep impression on hon. Members on all sides of the House during their visits to Northern Ireland. Those who reside there and represent Northern Ireland constituencies certainly appear to be of that view. However, in view of the comments that have


been made in the Press, it might be wise for the Police Authority, as the Secretary of State says, not only to note what has been said but perhaps to issue some statement of its own. This matter is arousing considerable comment.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): It has done so.

Mr. Neave: I have not seen that. I am glad to hear it. We have been very much impressed by Sir Jamie's success as Chief Constable and we are glad to note what the Secretary of State said about that.
Having regard to all the points which the Secretary of State has already made, with which I agree, we support the Order.

9.34 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: There are some books in which the footnotes occupy almost as large a part of the pages as the text. I was reminded of them during that long passage in the speech of the Secretary of State—certainly it was the most vigorous and eloquent passage in his speech—in which he repudiated all sorts of untruth and self-evident untruth which he found to be in circulation. Before I come to the Order and to his remarks about it, I should like to offer him two reflections upon that spirited apologia to which we listened.
The first is that it is nothing exceptional for acts which have nothing to do with a Minister of the Crown to be personalised in public presentation, though no doubt it is more tiresome in the circumstances of Northern Ireland when this happens. If it is any consolation to the right hon. Gentleman, I remember that, when I was Minister of Health and certain disciplinary procedures against practitioners and others in the National Health Service took place, procedures in which the Minister took no part and of which he could have no knowledge, I was constantly astonished to read in the newspapers such headlines as "Minister swoops on Kentish dentist", when I never knew that there was a Kentish dentist involved in anything. It all had to be personalised. So perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should not fall, as sometimes happens in Northern Ireland, into the idea that we are the only sufferers from what is a more general tendency. However, I agree that it can be more dangerous and more productive of

misunderstanding in Northern Ireland than elsewhere.
My other reflection arose from the word "politician" which the right hon. Gentleman used when referring to those who discussed so eagerly and gave such currency to many of the absurd, exaggerated or distorted rumours. This leads me to say—I am making no personal criticism of the right hon. Gentleman, but it is not without importance—that above the level of district council the elected politicians of Northern Ireland sit in this House—the people who bear political responsibility to the electorate of Northern Ireland are all 12 of them Members of this House. I often wish that the Press and others who seek information and views about what is going on in Northern Ireland would more often come to those who are responsible and are elected than to people who are not responsible and not elected. If that were done, it might be found that some of these rumours would be quashed earlier in their lifetime.
From that footnote upon a larger footnote I come back to the Order itself. It is salutary, tiresome through it may be to those who arrange the business of the House, that these emergency provivisions have to be renewed every six months, for it forces the Government and the representatives of Northern Ireland—indeed, it forces the House so far as we can say that the House is present this evening—to review very seriously and acidly where they were six months ago, and where six months ago they thought they were going.
I have been refreshing my memory of how the position appeared six short months ago when on 26th June the predecessor Order was debated. On that occasion the Secretary of State said:
There has been a significant reduction in incidents against the security forces and an overall reduction in terrorist incidents. This has exposed, or perhaps brought to the surface, much interfactional violence and violence between the communities in Northern Ireland."—[Official Report, 26th June 1975; Vol. 894, c. 816.]
We all wish that were as correct a description of the second half of 1975 as it was of the first half of 1975; but I am afraid that we have to record that in the second half of 1975 deliberate and murderous violence against the security forces—the police and the Army—and


against innocent members of the public—selected because they are innocent, just as they are selected by the terrorists here in Great Britain because they are innocent—has been a renewed feature of the scene. Although the interfactional and sectarian violence—the right hon. Gentleman regrets these stereotyped expressions as much as many of us do—has continued, it has been overlaid once again by the resumption of warfare against the security forces and against the law-abiding people of Northern Ireland. Moreover, in the second half of 1975 this has been accompanied by and linked with an extension of the warfare into Great Britain, directed against public opinion in this country and directed against this House.
Before I come to a deduction from that change, I want to dwell briefly upon the two salient events which have occurred in the last six months. The first is the virtual ending of the so-called truce. It always was a so-called truce. When the Secretary of State was introducing the Order six months ago, the truce was still something to which he, at any rate, referred with some satisfaction. At that time too the incident centres were still regarded as performing a useful function.
Now, to the relief of many of us, both those features have disappeared. At least I hope they have completely disappeared, because I am sure I am not alone in hoping that the dark side to the truce—namely, the placing of the IRA on the same plane as the Government through exchanges between representatives of the Government and of the IRA—has followed the incident centres, which gave rise to so much anxiety and interpretation or misinterpretation, and the so-called truce, which never was a truce, never ought to have been called a truce, was never meant to be a truce, into the limbo of forgotten things.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman, who normally chooses his words extremely carefully, would agree that, whatever else it was, it was not a truce. That it was a so-called cease-fire I would accept.

Mr. Powell: I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. I have the same objections to the term "cease-fire"; for ceasefire implies a transaction between two legitimate, legal, warring forces, and

carries with it the implication that the two forces which agree upon the ceasefire are somehow of the same kind and stand upon the same level. Therefore, although I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his substitution of the correct for the incorrect terminology, the argument and the considerations remain the same.
That is one event of the last six months. Though it might appear superficially to be regrettable, it is to be welcomed, first because it has stripped away misunderstandings which might prevail outside Northern Ireland, and secondly because it has helped to dispel the notion that there has been, or that there still is, a deal between the Government and the IRA. The right hon. Gentleman knows how dangerous, in the most literal sense of the word, such a belief can be.
That brings me to the second event of the last six months—the ending of detention. I do not believe that any hon. Members, certainly on this Bench, ever believed that the Secretary of State was ending detention as part of a deal with the IRA. It was bound to be said; it was bound to do harm that it was said; but, to those of us who knew what the right hon. Gentleman has reminded the House of this evening, it was incredible and never acceptable.
I think it is worth putting on record the fact that six months ago, when this policy, which has now been carried through, was at a much earlier stage, I said, speaking for my right hon. and hon. Friends as well as myself:
I am sure that the Secretary of State will be among the first to admit that he has received steady, though not uncritical, support … from right hon. and hon. Members on this bench. We have understood, too, what has been his aim and his strategy in the gradual unwinding of detention";
and I described it as a
policy to which we give general support".
There has been considerable misrepresentation, which would not have taken place if some had taken the trouble to listen to what is said in this Chamber, of the position on this matter of those who are elected to represent Northern Ireland and who bear responsibility to their electors.
At any rate, with the ending of detention, and the ending of the so-called cease-fire and the whole menagerie that


went with it, we are now facing a new phase. We can turn our back upon those two episodes and look forward. I come to what the Secretary of State said six months ago and substantially repeated tonight in his analysis of the causes of the violence, although he was then referring almost exclusively to interfactional and sectarian violence. I should like again to quote his exact words. He said:
It is clear that this new age of violence"—
that was the interfactional, sectarian phase—
has not arisen out of political aspirations; it is an outbreak of gangsterism fostered no doubt by the atmosphere of disrespect for the law … in recent years".—[Official Report, 26th June 1975; Vol. 894, c. 824, 816.]
The right hon. Gentleman this evening repeated somewhat the same analysis, though perhaps less emphatically.
With great respect, because the matter is one not of academic but of great practical importance, I want to take direct issue with the right hon. Gentleman. This violence in all its forms is politically motivated. It arises out of political aims and intentions. Of course, it is difficult for us in this House, reared in the tradidition of parliamentary democracy, to recognise as political actions actions such as those to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. But we shall go astray if we seek to conceal the fact that behind even the most bestial, even the most apparently insane, acts of violence in Northern Ireland there is a political motive. However twisted, it is political.
There is no doubt what that political motive is. It is the same as the motive for the murders by terrorists which are taking place in London. It is the political object of inducing this House and this country, against their will and judgment, to sever Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, against the wish of the majority of the inhabitants of Northern Ireland. That is the political object behind all the violence in all its forms and in all its phases.

Mr. Orme: That is not true.

Mr. Powell: If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that it is not true, he will have the opportunity to refute what I say.

Mr. A. J. Beith: Will the right hon. Gentleman

extend his definition to embrace the violence from the Protestant quarter?

Mr. Powell: Of course. Nothing whatsoever that I have said has excluded violence by Protestant paramilitaries or from any part of the spectrum. That violence is motivated and in the end excused, or even glorified, by the alleged fear, or the real fear, that the underlying political object of detaching Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom may be achieved unless people take the law into their own hands. That is the real motive, although the mistaken motive, of much of the violence which comes from bodies such as the proscribed UVF.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The question of whether there is a political motive and where that motive starts is an interesting one in the nature of Northern Ireland. Suppose, however, that there were a solution to the political problem, whatever that might mean. Is it not the case that in parts of Belfast especially there are people who take money off public-house keepers, and who in the Shankill and other parts take money off shopkeepers? Surely that would continue even if there were a political solution. The people who are so motivated seem to be a long way from the political scene.

Mr. Powell: I do not deny that mere crime, if I may so describe it, is fostered in the environment of the political violence which has raged in Northern Ireland during the past six or seven years. However, much of what appears to be mere crime, such as the robbery which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned, frequently takes place on the fringes, as it were, of violence and terrorism which is political. The fact that in some cases these crimes are punished by those who hold unlawful sway in the areas concerned is a demonstration that much of what appears to be mere crime is crime supported by those who are politically motivated and related indirectly to the central political theme.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: If the right hon. Gentleman's argument is right, am I wrong in my strong feeling that it is necessary to end the political status of convicted persons? If he says that the violence is political, is he not strengthening the argument that people should be given political status?

Mr. Powell: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has made that point so that I can refute it. A crime committed with a political motive is still a crime and must be punished like any other crime. A murder which is politically motivated is not thereby excused. Nor is the person who commits such a crime entitled to any consideration which any other murderer should not receive. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for enabling me to prevent anyone from drawing that fallacious deduction from what I am saying.
I repeat: I am not engaging in an academic or philosophical debate with the right hon. Gentleman. My purpose is intensely practical. I shall show how it is so from the concluding part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, when he spoke of those who urge a declaration of intent to withdraw the Army from that part of the United Kingdom. He said, quite rightly, that nothing would be more catastrophic. However such a declaration was hedged about—irrespective of whether it talked about years or decades—we all know that it would be catastrophic and would produce bloodshed on a larger scale than we have yet witnessed. Yet the right hon. Gentleman was saying in the same breath that that is the objective, the political objective, of those who exercise the dominant and underlying violence in Northern Ireland, and, incidentally, of those who are exercising it here in Great Britian. It is their objective to enforce just such a decision and just such an announcement as that.
The analysis of the cause of violence, and the measures which we use to deal with it, must be linked, the one following from the other. The Secretary of State rightly says that, faced with this violence—he was admitting, accepting and asserting its political objective despite his earlier remarks—the one thing he will not do is to hold out, under the influence of anything that has been happening, any prospect of the achievement of the political aim of the detachment of Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom, or anything that would be seen as a step towards its detachment; and the right hon. Gentleman added the words "because it is a part of the United Kingdom".
Now, there are many aspects of policy in which, by omission or commission, a

diluted form of that very message is constantly being tapped out by the administration in Northern Ireland.
Let me give examples of what I mean; for it is this that proves how wrong people are who say "If the Army were only given a free hand, and if the security forces were simply told that no holds were barred and that they should get on with it, the situation in Northern Ireland would soon be cleared up". Those people misunderstand the fact that the physical and political are indissoluble from each other, that there is a closed circle which connects the political implications of Government action or inaction with the progress and continuance of violence.
I shall trespass on the time of the House to refer to only two very different areas of anxiety that come under this head. The first arises directly out of Section 23 of the 1973 Act which we are renewing. It reads:
Any person who in a public place dresses or behaves in such a way as to arouse reasonable apprehension that he is a member of a proscribed organisation shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding £400, or both".
We all know that those offences are regularly committed in public under the television cameras and under the eyes of the security forces, the police and the Army. It is no good denying it; it happens. Moreover, on those same occasions illegally-held firearms are not merely displayed but are actually discharged. That is a crime and does not require the Emergency Provisions Act 1973 to make it a crime.
The Secretary of State said that it was the duty of the police to enforce the law independently of him and that there was no question of the Secretary of State putting pressure on the police force. That may be so. Moreover, the police force—everybody from the Chief Constable to the police constable on the beat—must form its own judgment when confronted with what appears to it to be, and no doubt is, a crime—nobody doubts or disputes that. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that a right judgment is being exercised in permitting the continuance, as an established institution, of the breach of the law governing firearms and the breach of the law in Section 23 of the 1973 Act.
I say that not out of vindictiveness but because the continuance of this connivance carries with it a political implication, the implication that, while this is a law which would be observed in Great Britain and nobody would get away with breaking, the reason why as a matter of principle it is not enforced in Northern Ireland is the view of Government and Parliament that in the last resort the political future of Northern Ireland is not the same as for the rest of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I have often considered this. Shortly before I first went to Northern Ireland, and when the Labour Party was in opposition, I appeared on a television programme with a young Army officers who referred to IRA funerals and the shots that were fired during them. He said that the Army failed to deal with them because of political control. At the first security meeting I attended in Northern Ireland I raised this point and said—I never dreamt of saying it later, because it was a silly thing to say—that I would not inhibit the Army. Shots are fired at IRA funerals as well as at UDA funerals. I shall deal with IRA funerals, at which young people fire shots into the air. It was put strongly to me that to break up a funeral in a Catholic area would do more harm than good and that the company commander on the spot has to make a judgment. On one occasion I went incognito to watch such a funeral and I appreciated that point. At similar funerals in recent weeks—I do not know whether the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) can corroborate this—attendances have been falling all the time. It may be that this approach is best.

Mr. Powell: We do not discuss a matter such as this, from either side of the House, without a deep sense of responsibility or without being aware of the considerations to which the right hon. Gentleman has rightly drawn attention. Nevertheless, my point remains and to some extent he has come to meet it. The point is that continued connivance in a breach of the law in Northern Ireland, in circumstances that are highly politically charged with political symbolism, conveys exactly the message which lies at the root of the continuance of terrorism and bloodshed. The right hon. Gentleman comes to meet

me in the sense that he, too, accepts that the indefinite continuance of those breaches of the law, as if they were institutionalised, is something that cannot be accepted. Perhaps by bringing this out into the open and by our exchange this evening something has been achieved.
The second area to which I wish to refer is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) namely, South Armagh, about which we hear every day. The area is in my hon. Friend's constituency, but in uncomfortable proximity to mine and not many miles from my Ulster home. There it is especially tempting for people to suppose that provided the correct military and security dispositions are taken the difficulties in due course will disappear. I am not suggesting that we have the military or the security dispositions right yet. On the contrary, I believe the events of the last few weeks have proved that we have not yet got the right tactical approach in South Armagh. However, that is not the point I am on.
The point is that all the tactics in the world in South Armagh will not eliminate that cancer—that political as well as physical cancer—from Northern Ireland unless the whole political framework of what happens in South Armagh is also perceived and dealt with. It is the control of the frontier which is there at stake. So long as it appears that as a matter of policy the frontier between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic is quite deliberately not treated as any other frontier anywhere else in the world would be, so long will those who wish to draw deductions draw the deduction that the frontier is regarded by Government, Parliament and opinion in this country as a transitory phenomenon. In other words, it becomes part of the political fuel of continuing violence.
When I refer to the control of the frontier I am well aware of the physical and practical difficulties of direct control. I have two specific comments to make in that respect. First, if there are to be controlled crossings of the frontier, then, once the Government engage upon a policy they must stick to it. They must adopt a policy which it is practicable to carry through, but having once adopted it they must not be deterred from persisting in it. It is worse than nothing to


attempt to block or crater unapproved crossings and then abandon them afterwards. This does more harm than if no action is taken in the first place. A recognisable policy for the physical control of crossings, authorised and unauthorised crossings, must therefore be persisted with.
However, as on the Continent, physical control of a land frontier—unless there is to be an Iron Curtain—is not in itself sufficient. It is real only when it is backed by internal control over identification, over legality of presence, of entry and of movement. The Government's control of the frontier, which is part of the emergency law—although not part of that which we are renewing tonight—will not be treated seriously, and consequently the Government's political purpose will not be taken seriously, unless control becomes a reality both on the frontier—so far as that is possible—and by means of identification within the United Kingdom.
I will be specific. I know that I am not alone in believing that the time has come when the people of Northern Ireland, whatever might have been their opinion in very different years gone by would actually welcome it if their movement between Great Britain and Northern Ireland were subject to the necessity of carrying a passport which showed that they were or were not citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. They

would welcome it if it were a requirement in Northern Ireland for every person to carry not merely a means of identification but something which showed, if he was not a citizen of this country, how he came to be here and whether or not he came to be here legally.
The Secretary of State may claim that this is a very big issue, and it is; but it is something which would now have the backing of the bulk of opinion in Northern Ireland. Unless the Government are seen to be serious about the frontier between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic they will not be believed to be politically serious in their approach to violence in Northern Ireland.
I must refer once again to the precision with which the Secretary of State pinpointed the connection between violence in all its forms and the desire to force the British Government into foreshadowing the destruction, in the future, of the present status of Northern Ireland. Everything, whether omission or commission, which brings that status into doubt is the root cause of the continuance of all forms of the violence with which Northern Ireland is so afflicted and which none of us in this House doubts—and I assume that this includes the hon Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt), but he will doubtless speak for himself—makes at present inevitable something of the nature of the laws and powers which we are renewing tonight.

10.5 p.m.

Mr. Gerard Fitt: Since the introduction of these emergency provisions in 1973 and our subsequent debates on their retention, this is the first time we can say that detention or internment without trial no longer exists in Northern Ireland. That is a tremendous advance towards achieving normality. I again extend my congratulations to the Secretary of State for his courageous decision in the face of the mounting and unwarranted opposition of the gunboat diplomats on the extreme fringe of the Conservative Party.
It has been said that many hon. Members for Northern Ireland constituencies have never wholeheartedly favoured detention. I understand that they have not raised objections to its ending. That onerous task has been taken up by the Front Bench Members of the Conservative Party, who were perhaps doing their little thing without the knowledge or support of elected representatives from Northern Ireland. In adopting that attitude Conservative Front Bench speakers were not being honest with themselves, because it was their own party which began the process of releasing detainees. It was recognised at the time that it would be a continuing process.
It was in 1972, after the abolition of Stormont and the imposition of direct rule, that the former Conservative Secretary of State began releasing internees, as they were then known—long before Sunning-dale was even thought of. Sunningdale was a golf course to me then. Little did I know that it would be written into the pages of history because of the political agreement reached there.
The process was therefore begun by the Conservative Party, and it ill behoves Conservative spokesmen now to mount completely unjustified criticism of my right hon. Friend when he is trying to end one of the greatest divisive factors in recent years in Northern Ireland's political troubles. It is certainly accepted that the introduction of internment in 1971 was the greatest morale booster, the greatest weapon, that the IRA had ever had. It has exploited its continuation and its propaganda and emotional value throughout the years.
I repeat what I said last week in a brief supplementary question. I think that it

will be generally conceded by Northern Ireland Members, although they may be my political opponents, that in the years which succeeded 9th August 1971 Sinn Fein celebrated—that was its own word, not "commemorated"—every anniversary of the introduction of internment by hijacking and burning buses, by intimidation and riots—and all in minority Catholic areas. They did not celebrate it on the Malone Road or the suburbs and affluent areas of Belfast. They celebrated it in the minority areas, causing nothing but distress and despair.
But I repeat what I said last week. There were no bonfires lit on the streets of Belfast when my right hon. Friend brought internment to an end, because there was nothing to celebrate. In fact, a whole new industry was closed—the Christmas card industry from Long Kesh. One card bore a picture of wires with a little girl holding on to them saying "I want my daddy. My daddy is interned without trial and without any charge in Northern Ireland." Those cards went all over the world and were one of the biggest propaganda weapons that the IRA ever had. From them it received quite a lot of financial return from people all over the world, especially from Irish-Americans who did not understand what was happening in Northern Ireland.
Many of my constituents were the victims of internment in Northern Ireland. In the interests of my constituency, perhaps I might ask my right hon. Friend to apply his mind to setting up some new industry in the place of the one which has been taken away by the Secretary of State—the making of Christmas cards in Northern Ireland.
To convince people who are still opposed to the ending of detention, I want to repeat again that it was the right decision to take. However, many people will think that, now that detention has been ended, the minority community who suffered so tragically because of the introduction of internment ought to be able to put it out of their minds. I know that a number of Loyalists were interned as well. But we must not forget that every person interned without trial in Northern Ireland had a family who were involved. His wife, his brothers, his sisters and his relations were all made antagonistic towards the system. Hostility was


generated because a member of the family had been interned.
The Secretary of State said at one time that 2,000 people had seen the inside of Long Kesh. If we multiply that number by all the close and distant relations—even people who would not want to be friendly with some of their relations—the figure can be brought up to 60,000 or 70,000 Loyalists and Republicans who were involved in some way or other with detention and internment.
I hope that my right hon. Friend is not so unrealistic as to expect, now that internment has been brought to an end, the whole minority community to begin to co-operate completely with the voice of authority in Northern Ireland. The ending of detention does not mean that everyone will wake up next morning with a clear conscience. The slate has not been wiped absolutely clean. There will not be a new beginning immediately. People will still feel strongly about it. They are people who were sadly affected by the tragedy of internment. It will take them some time to forget the effect that internment had on those who were interned and on their families. It is only understandable that they may not co-operate completely within hours, days or weeks.
But the great barrier against co-operation has been removed. I have said in Northern Ireland and I say again here to the minority community who were so sadly affected by internment and all that went with it that it has been a long political battle to have internment brought to an end.
I understand that the last detainee to be released is one of my constituents, although I have serious doubts whether he has ever supported me at the polls. When he was released, he made a statement and it was shown on television. It appears that he did not write the statement himself, because he did not pronounce the words very well when he read it. In the course of it, he said that the SDLP could take no credit for the ending of detention. I am not sure whether the SDLP can take credit for it. I leave that to my right hon. Friend. But the people who most certainly cannot take credit for the ending of detention are the Provisional IRA. They were the last people to want to see internment

and detention ended, because it was the greatest weapon they had in their armoury.
But again I say that the minority community will not easily or readily forget the effects of internment. I hope to be able to stand in this House and see the obnoxious internment provision no longer necessary. But the minority community must recognise, and I am certain they do, that detention has been brought to an end. If it is introduced again in the future, and I hope to God it never is, it will have been brought about by an upsurge of violence by people who want to see internment reactivated. They will be people who engage in violence with the specific intention of detention being reintroduced. The minority must be warned to watch every action of the men of violence because they will try to bring about the return of detention.
The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) said that the elected politicians for Northern Ireland were Members elected to this House, and he referred to local authority representatives in Northern Ireland. I know that it would be very difficult, particularly in relation to an Irishman, to put a correct interpretation on who is and who is not a politician, because everyone in Ireland regards himself as being a politician at some level. There are many Members who are now elected to the Convention in Northern Ireland and who were Members of the previous political establishment at Stormont, who were recognised as politicians. I am sure they would look askance at some of their new elected Members who sit in this House if they were no longer regarded as politicians, because they try to represent the political aspirations of those who returned them to the Convention.
I have some reservations about accepting the right hon. Member's interpretation of a politician. I hope it was not a subtle attempt to further his argument on total integration, because that could be the spin-off from the sentiments that he has just expressed. If we are the only elected politicians in Northern Ireland, this could be used as an argument for total integration.

Mr. Powell: Not at present.

Mr. Fitt: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman has never been a


supporter of devolved government for Northern Ireland. If that is so, there may be a real local difficulty with those who at present sit with him in this House.

Mr. Powell: I was sticking to what was in my election address, which was the same election address as that of my hon. Friends.

Mr. Fitt: One of the politicians elected to the Convention, Professor Kennedy Lindsay—he was a member of the Vanguard Party—said in his election address that the right hon. Gentleman and he were colleagues. But there is a big difference in interpretation.
The right hon. Member for Down, South uses his undoubted logic about the Northern Ireland situation, but it is not enough. If a newspaper wanted to do so, it could quite honestly say that he had justified every violent action over the past years on the ground that it was politically motivated. That is the way it will be taken in Northern Ireland. It is exactly what the provisional IRA, the UDA, the UVF and all the other illegal organisations want. They want to be able to say, "We were motivated by political idealism and, therefore, we are apart from ordinary criminals. We should have special consideration inside prison, and when and if there is an amnesty—"and there will be an amnesty—" we will be released." That is the way the right hon. Gentleman's argument will be taken in Northern Ireland.
I have lived and fought in Northern Ireland politics for a long time. I take the contrary view. I have said time and again, in the face of total opposition by the PIRA and the other illegal organisations, that I do not, never have and never will regard murder, maiming, kneecapping, bank robbery and intimidation as politically motivated. They are criminal offences and those who engage in them are criminals.

Mr. Powell: Of course they are—they are political criminals.

Mr. Fitt: I do not believe that they are politically motivated. Many of those committing these crimes have no political motivation but are out for personal and private gain. That goes for both sides.

Mr. James Molyneaux: Would not the hon. Gentleman

accept that what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) is no different from the stance taken by all of us sitting on this Bench? We have said frequently that in Northern Ireland there is a primary source of violence—the Provisional IRA—with all its related violence and lawlessness. We have said that it is all part and parcel of the same problem and that until the primary source is dealt with we cannot hope to overcome all the other forms of violence and petty crime, because they are linked together.

Mr. Fitt: I do not think that the argument advanced by the right hon. Member for Down, South is completely in line with what has been said by his hon. Friends over the years. Perhaps the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) will be able to influence him to a greater degree so that we shall hear a united voice from their party.
I accept that these people are criminals, but I argue that we cannot expect the security forces to settle a criminal problem to the total exclusion of trying to deal with the political divisions in Northern Ireland. This is not a simple security problem against criminals. One has to try to tackle both problems at the same time.
Earlier today we had a debate on capital punishment for terrorism. No one knows more about terrorism than we in Northern Ireland. My impression is that the debate was generated by the assassination of Mr. McWhirter. Some people in Northern Ireland might ask why the House of Commons became so hysterical and upset because of the assassination of an individual in London when there has been so much murder in Northern Ireland, although mostly of people less prominent than Mr. McWhirter. I never met Mr. McWhirter, but I sympathise with his family. Perhaps we would not have agreed politically, but he did not deserve the death he died.
But does anyone seriously believe that the restoration of capital punishment would have stopped the PIRA? The first thing it would have done would have been to recruit 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds for bombing missions. What court, jury, country or Government would agree to a boy or girl of 16 or 17 being hanged for a terrorist offence? That would have been the result had the vote


today gone the other way and had the decision been implemented.
It is to the terrible discredit of the IRA that it has callously exploited the idealism of the young. I do not restrict my remarks in this respect to the IRA. because many young people of the tender age of 16 or 17 have been used on the Loyalist side. Those who are now before the courts in Northern Ireland—Loyalist extremists and Republican extremists—are usually of the age of 18 or 19. Those kids were 12 or 13 in 1968. It is the people who are using these youngsters who are the criminals.

Mr. McCusker: Has not the hon. Gentleman within the past few minutes contradicted what he said earlier? Is not the idealism which motivates teenagers of 16, 17 or 18 a political idealism? I disagree with it, but it is because of that that they are caught in the web and are prepared to commit the atrocities they are committing.

Mr. Fitt: I have said repeatedly in this House that they are people involved who are politically motivated, but I repeat that there are people who are in it for personal gain and they are exploiting the situation and are in no way motivated by any political ideals.
We have referred to the debate which took place here this afternoon. It is known in Northern Ireland that this debate is taking place tonight. It is known there that earlier we were discussing capital punishment. That is why the bomb went off in Royal Avenue. It was an act of defiance. It was to say "When we want to, we will." There was the hijacking of a Post Office van in Belfast this afternoon and the threatening of the legal driver of the van, forcing him to drive the bomb up to the side of an Army post in Royal Avenue. I understand that five soldiers were injured. That was despicable cowardice on the part of people who are allegedly motivated by political idealism but do not have the courage to drive their bomb to its destination. They used some poor innocent person, who was perhaps absolutely terrified by having to do that. I say without fear of contradiction that those who force innocent people to drive bombs in this proxy manner are nothing but despicable cowards.
In regard to our emergency legislation and the debate which took place earlier today, I must say that I feel more bitter about maiming than murders. We have a situation in which a person aged 75 or 80—although to me all life is sacred—could be killed in an explosion, and those responsible would, if the motion debated earlier today had been approved and implemented, be subject to the death penalty. On the other hand, a bomb could explode in a restaurant, killing no one but causing scores of people, young and old, male and female, to have limbs blown off and to have to live out their lives without their natural arms or legs. The persons caught and convicted of that offence would not be subjected to the death penalty. They would be sentenced to imprisonment. To me such people are far more guilty, in one sense, than those who kill someone.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly spent some time in his own defence and the defence of his Ministers in relation to the subject of the Chief Constable in Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend has been very explicit in putting forward his point of view, in contradistincton to what others are saying in Northern Ireland. I have had absolutely no consultation with any of my colleagues from Northern Ireland on this issue, so there is no question of any collusion. However, when the present Chief Constable was appointed two years ago it was widely known that he was a Roman Catholic. It was pointed out in a Press report that he was a Catholic. At that time I issued a statement in which I said that the fact that he was a Roman Catholic did not influence me. I said that his religion meant nothing to me and that I wanted to see whether he was a good policeman.
The remarks of my colleague, Paddy Devlin, have been referred to. Perhaps Paddy Devlin felt justified in saying what he did at that time, and I know that he would not want to go back on his words. However, in the years which have elapsed since Mr. Flanagan was appointed Chief Constable the whole community in Northern Ireland has found him to be what he should be—a policeman who is acting in the interest of the whole community of Northern Ireland.
Sadly, all too often I have had occasion to go to the Chief Constable about


assassinations which have taken place, in particular in West Belfast, where there is an interface area where cars come in. Some of the people who were guilty of those murders have subsequently been caught and convicted and are now serving terms of imprisonment. I remember a particular occasion before Christmas when two brothers who worked in the Post Office were on their way up Divis Road when a car came round from Northumberland Street and they were killed. I can recall another occasion when two or three people were killed in the same way in North Belfast.
When those murders took place, I thought it only right to go to the Chief Constable to seek his assistance about what steps could possibly be taken to prevent further assassinations of that kind taking place. I found him to be a very impartial and concerned police administrator. He asked me whether I had any suggestions about what steps should be taken to try to prevent these assassinations taking place. On some occasions I was accompanied by Mr. Devlin and on others, when brutal assassinations were taking place in what is called the "murder triangle", my colleague who represents that part of Northern Ireland accompanied me. We felt that in the circumstances it was only right to go to the Chief Constable.
I repeat that the everyday activities of the RUC, in its attempt to stamp out violence and criminal activities in Northern Ireland, receive wholehearted support. At present security is under the control of Westminster. Provided we can ensure that the police force is acting impartially towards all the community in Northern Ireland, showing no bias in favour of one community as opposed to another, it will have our wholehearted support in whatever steps it takes to eradicate violence from Northern Ireland.

Mr. Orme: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves this aspect, I should like to point out that I have noted what he and other hon. Members have said about the present Chief Constable. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was not defending the situation. He was explaining the legal situation and his statutory powers. If my hon. Friend wants to address remarks about Sir Jamie Flanagan and the decision of the Police Authority, he must address them to the Police Authority.

Mr. Fitt: My right hon. Friend's intervention appears to indicate that there are deep feelings running in the Northern Ireland Office about certain allegations which are being made. I am making no allegation. Indeed, I have not done so throughout this controversy. I have talked to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Office officials about the controversy which has arisen over the retirement, or possibly the premature retirement, of the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend has repeatedly said—he has said it again tonight—that he has played absolutely no part in the decision which was taken by the Police Authority to replace the Chief Constable.
The present Chief Constable, on taking up his appointment, said that he would take it for two years. He was then 61. He is now 63. In the 24 months since he took up his appointment he and certain people in Northern Ireland have found that he has had the confidence of his own force as no other chief constable or inspector-general had. It is a unique departure from previous political developments in Northern Ireland that I can stand up in this House, sit in a television studio in Northern Ireland or make statements to the Northern Ireland Press and confirm that I have found the Chief Constable to be a man well fitted for the position that he holds. There is political progress there.
I do not think that this would be an occasion for any of my political opponents to bring up the question of the SDLP's non-acceptance of our support for the RUC. Many things which have happened in the past have led to the minority community's feelings about the RUC and the question of its non-acceptance or support. Many events in history—some of that history is not in the distant past—have led to the determining of the minority's attitude to the police.
I am confirmed in my belief when I see that Lord Hunt, who was appointed by the previous Labour Government, in a letter to The Times on 27th November, in which he appeared to be answering a letter which had been written by Mr. Harry West in Northern Ireland, said he would agree that security should be transferred to any new devolved governmental structures in Northern Ireland on


the condition that there was full involvement and partnership between both communities.
That is exactly what the SDLP wants. We want new political structures which will allow participation by the whole community in Northern Ireland. In that event I would be the first to aid and abet the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) in his demand for a return of security functions to Northern Ireland.
The right hon. Member for Down, South—unusually for him—seemed to relate his remarks to the wearing of illegal uniforms in specifically Republican areas. I admit that the wearing of uniforms and the firing of shots over the graves of Republican soldiers, claimed to have been killed in action, takes place. However, that happens in other than Republican areas. It happens in Armagh—not South Armagh. It happens in Portadown. That is an area which is allegedly in support of all the security forces and where there is no objection to the operation of the RUC. After the murder of the Miami Showband, in which two UVF men lost their lives, there was a military funeral at Portadown. Many uniforms were worn and shots were fired over the coffins. Yet neither the RUC nor the military took any action. Therefore, it is unfair to point the finger at one section of extremists in Northern Ireland and not to look at the mote in one's own eye.
This debate is about security. I hope that we may quickly see the day when I can stand here, perhaps in association with my colleagues from Northern Ireland, and talk about houses, shops, education, poverty and the deprivation which exists in all our constituencies. That is what I wanted to do in politics. I am not happy to be talking about security situations, emergency legislation and people getting killed, and totting up the number of crimes committed in Northern Ireland by one side or the other. It is completely against everything which first motivated me to enter politics.
I prefaced my remarks by saying that we wanted to see an end to this type of legislation. We shall no longer have any reason to discuss it only when political progress and developments take place in Northern Ireland, when we can create structures which have the allegiance of

all the people of Northern Ireland, when they can all act in government and in community with each other, trying to forget the sad divisions and tragedies of not only the past seven years but all the years before.
The men of violence can exploit the present vacuum to their own advantage. I urge my right hon. Friend to use whatever influence he can with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that the Northern Ireland Convention is reconvened, whatever the right hon. Member for Down, South may think of it. I know that he does not put it very high on his list of priorities, but many people in Northern Ireland do. Many people who have lived all their lives in Northern Ireland, young and old, want to see the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland.
I appeal to the Government to try to reconvene the Convention, to see whether it is possible to reach political agreement. My right hon. Friend is aware that it will be no easy task, but, with all the obstacles that we shall find on the road to a political settlement, we should be given a further opportunity. After all, six months was a short time in the life of Northern Ireland to try to find solutions to a problem which had existed for 300 or 400 years.
The Government would be right to give the Convention another opportunity to see whether it can find a solution, and they should reconvene it as soon as possible. I hope and believe that we could make some political progress which would make it unnecessary for us ever again to have to discuss the kind of legislation we are discussing tonight.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Both Front Bench speakers have agreed to limit the winding-up speeches to 10 minutes each, but that leaves us with only 26 minutes for four hon. Members who wish to speak.

10.44 p.m.

Rev. Ian Paisley: There are many matters that Members on this side of the House would like to discuss tonight, but time is short. I suppose that we should be grateful that we are having an extended debate because the House finished its previous business rather quickly. We should normally have had one and a half hours to debate the


Order. I believe that an extended debate is necessary in the circumstances.
There are some things that the people of Northern Ireland will want their representatives to say with great strength and force in this debate. First, I want briefly to refer to the despicable attack made on me and my colleagues by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) in the first debate of the day. He said that he hoped we would be in the dock. He talked about going to Northern Ireland and meeting the heads of the IRA. I do not know how he can be willing to meet wanted men, but evidently the hon. Gentleman has some direct line to wanted men. He castigated myself and my hon. Friend because the UDA no longer says anything in our favour, but if we had the approval of the UDA, we should be greeted with a howl of condemnation.
As some of us have condemned the murders committed by various Protestant groups we have come in for the lash of those groups, but we intend to do what is right and to say what is right no matter what some hon. Members may think about us. I shall not say any more about that, because the hon. Gentleman does not happen to be present. I prefer to speak about people when they are present, but I must put that on the record.
Let the House know that in Northern Ireland we have a serious state of affairs. In the previous debate it was said that the people should not take the law into their own hands. That was put forward as a precious principle of British democracy. But when the police and the Army say that they cannot defend us, that they can do nothing for us, what are we to do? Do we say "All right, we shall be slaughtered."? My hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) has hundreds upon hundreds of constituents living in outlying farms. Tonight, and at any time, they will lie as prey to the IRA murderers. Neither the police nor the Army can do or are doing anything about that.
Let it be made clear that attempts have been made to murder many people in public life in Northern Ireland. Many of us have experienced such attempts. Reference was made today to such attempts by the Home Secretary, but he does not know about all the attempts to murder Northern Ireland Members. He

does not know about the shots that have been fired through our windows. My wife has been attacked in the streets of Belfast. The right hon. Gentleman thinks that attempts have been made on the lives of only two Members, but some of us can list many such attempts. That does not apply only to United Ulster Unionist Members but to politicians on both sides of the fence.
Let the Government not wash their hands Pilate-like at the Dispatch Box and think that Northern Ireland people are not suffering. We know that law and order have broken down. We know that the police and the Army cannot defend the populace of Northern Ireland. We are in a sad and sorry state of affairs.

Mr. Orme: The hon. Gentleman says that the Army and the police cannot defend the Northern Ireland people, but that is not completely true. The Army and the police are defending. If the Army were withdrawn, the hon. Gentleman's constituents would be put in a very difficult situation. The hon. Gentleman may make his protestations but I am sure that he will recognise that the Army is doing an essential job on behalf of the civil power, whether it be in Belfast or within South Armagh.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I should not like my remarks to be interpreted in that way. I am not saying anything against what the Army is doing, but when the Army and the police tell my constituents "We cannot do anything for you" and when they tell the business people in Belfast "We cannot give you protection", it is clear that those people have a right to point out to their public representatives that security in Northern Ireland is in a sad state.
The Government Front Bench would do far better by waking up to the fact that we are in a serious state in Northern Ireland. Let no one try in any way to diminish the terrible tragedy that is happening in Northern Ireland. The people of Northern Ireland expect their representatives in this House to spell it out in crystal-clear language. They cry out for security, peace and defence.
Often it is not possible for them to have them. Even the Secretary of State must admit—and it was admitted in the debate on the first Order—that the police


could not possibly execute many of the provisions. The Army will have to undertake that job. That shows the sorry state of things. There are instances where the Army cannot do the job of the police because the troops are not trained to do it.
Let me make clear that many people in Northern Ireland are on their own in terms of security. It is also a fact that many public representatives are told "You may have a personal weapon and if you are attacked you must do your best, because probably neither police nor Army will be present when you are attacked." We have to face up to that situation.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The hon. Gentleman is right in that sense, but I would remind him that there are 14,000 soldiers in Northern Ireland and each individual man in the five battalions works 18 hours a day. I can see what the hon. Gentleman is driving at, but if he seeks to say that there is no defence, he is not facing up to the fact that there are sections of the community where support has been given to paramilitary organisations on both sides—and I shall not go into who came first. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not depreciating what the Army is doing. What he is saying gets through to the ordinary soldiers from this part of the United Kingdom. They do not take kindly to criticism when they are working as hard as they possibly can and doing an excellent job.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I have offered no criticism at any time of the Army or of the police. I am the first to say that these men are doing a terrific and tremendous job, but they cannot totally do the job of defending Northern Ireland.
It also needs to be said that Northern Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom because the British Army happens to be there. A number of hon. Members come to me and say "If the Army pulled out, what would happen?" It would not change the determination of the majority to remain within the United Kingdom.
It is also a fact that Ulstermen who defended Ulster for 50 years by the Vote of this House were disbanded, destroyed, and told "We do not want you to defend the people of Northern Ireland." It ill becomes Members of this House to say that the British Army is defending Ulster.

Ulster had its defences. Those defences were criticised in the same way as I have heard hon. Members criticise the Army.
We have one Member who flits in and out and who has not yet made his maiden speech. He was in today. No wonder—he is afraid that some of his IRA friends might be hanged for some depredation, so he came in to cast his vote. I said to my hon. Friends "He is saying things about the British Army that are almost as diabolical as the criticisms made of the Ulster Special Constabulary whose members defended Ulster". We in Ulster know what is happening. We live with this situation.
This House, by its own vote, decided that the RUC should no longer be an armed police force. Sir John Hunt has been quoted tonight. When we were about to be plunged into a savage IRA onslaught, the Ulster defences were taken from us. The Ulster Special Constabulary was disbanded and was left as the prey. This House has a serious responsibility in these matters.
I came to this House many years ago and I remember that for a debate such as this the Benches would be packed with Members all shouting against the RUC, the B-Specials and Stormont. We were told "Do away with these things and you will have peace". So the police were disarmed. Did that bring peace? The Specials disappeared. Did that bring peace? Stormont was destroyed. Did that bring peace?
An ombudsman and commissioner to hear complaints was appointed because it was said that there was religious discrimination right across the board in Northern Ireland. How many cases of religious discrimination has the ombudsman Droved? How many times has he even been used? The office of the commissioner for complaints and the ombudsman had to be held by one person because no one brought any complaints.
We were told to get rid of internment. I was always opposed to internment, although some of my colleagues were not. The Secretary of State said that if there were a genuine and sustained cessation of violence, he would finish with detention. He should not have said anything of the sort. He should have said that he was finishing with detention—full stop—because there has not been a


genuine and sustained cessation of violence, but detention is now over.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: The major reason that I have been able to end detention is that nearly 1,200 people have passed through the courts and been sentenced. It is not because there has been a genuine and sustained cessation of violence, which I mentioned earlier this year. There has been a change and it is the success of the security forces that has enabled me to do it.

Rev. Ian Paisley: The Secretary of State may like to know that the words "genuine and sustained cessation of violence" are on everyone's tongue in Northern Ireland. There is no such thing. The bombings are continuing, but detention is over. The Secretary of State is critical of my party and probably more critical of me than anyone else. He brings many things on his own head in relation to Northern Ireland. One example was the result of the cease-fire because his officials and the Provisional Sinn Fein, which is the IRA wearing a political hat, whatever shape and size it may be, had talks. The Provisional Sinn Fein released certain information about what was said at those talks. Whether what was released was true, the talks were reported, and that gave rise to the serious situation of Government officials having talks with those who were the front-line propagandists of the bombers and killers. In Northern Ireland we saw these very people on our television screens defending violence. I saw one of them defending the shooting of a six-year-old girl. The other night Marie Drumm excused the shooting of that six-year-old girl.

Mr. Fitt: I should say in defence of the action taken by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State that the person allegedly responsible for the killing of that six-year-old girl has been charged and is before the courts.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether Government officials and the Provisional Sinn Fein are still talking. I am told that at that meeting Sir Frank Cooper is reported to have said to the Provisional Sinn Fein that—

Mr. Merlyn Rees: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is not the practice of the House to mention the

Permanent Under-Secretary of any Department. However, I shall make it absolutely clear that he never met a member of the Provisional Sinn Fein in those talks.

Rev. Ian Paisley: The Secretary of State says "in those talks". I am saying that Sir Frank Cooper has talked to the Provisional Sinn Fein.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: It is not true.

Mr. Orme: Attack the Ministers, not the civil servants.

Rev. Ian Paisley: When men's lives are at stake it is far too serious to quibble over civil servants. If civil servants, acting in the name of the Secretary of State, are doing things that the people of Ulster do not like, we shall expose them. I shall go further, because things have been said tonight which have implied that we are responsible for what is happening to Sir Jamie Flanagan.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I must make it absolutely clear that I am responsible for all these matters, and it is no use the hon. Gentleman repeating an untruth. No meeting has taken place with Sir Frank Cooper, and the hon. Gentleman is repeating the same sort of rubbish we had earlier in the year about Seamus Twomey. That was rubbish also.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps I may join in now. It is not out of Order to criticise civil servants, but it is not the custom of the House to do so. I cannot remember its being done. This seems to me to be a disagreement in argument, not a point of order.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I am aware of that Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall try to finish now. Nevertheless, there are things which need to be said tonight in the name of the people of Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State has mentioned the Seamus Twomey affair. On that occasion an Army document came into my possession.

Mr. Orme: How?

Rev. Ian Paisley: If the right hon. Gentleman wants to know how that document came to me, he should go to his friends in the Army and the police with whom I was in touch when I got the


document and hear from them. I got that Army document—

Mr. Orme: Illegally.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I did not get it illegally. The Secretary of State denied that document existed although it was produced in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson). Yet the police questioned him under the Official Secrets Act. How can someone be questioned about a document which we are told did not exist?
The document, which I released to the Press, stated that Mr. Twomey was no longer a wanted man. The Northern Ireland Office said that what I was claiming was rubbish, yet the Army investigated the document and confirmed that it was authentic. As far as the Army was concerned, Mr. Twomey was not a wanted man. The RUC, however, issued a statement to say that he was wanted under a warrant which had been issued in the South of Ireland. The Army did not arrest the leader of the IRA and he was allowed to walk around in an Army area.

Mr. Orme: That is not true.

Mr. Merlyn Rees: I have control only over whether an interim custody order is issued. At the beginning of the year I told the Army which ICOs I was signing. The Army knew that Seamus Twomey was not wanted under an ICO. The hon. Gentleman may say what he likes. The police will pick up whom they like. I never discuss with them whom they want. This issue involves only the issuing of an ICO to the Army.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Let us move on to the Jamie Flanagan issue. When he was appointed there was a move by the then Secretary of State to enlarge the membership of the Police Authority by including on it elected representatives. We met the Authority, and it gave us an assurance that it would not appoint the Chief Constable until it had consulted the elected representatives again.

Mr. Orme: You said you were going to raise it in the Assembly.

Rev. Ian Paisley: How could I say that when I had been kicked out of the Assembly?

Mr. Orme: It was said.

Rev. Ian Paisley: I know that it was said. What I complained about was the way in which the appointment was made. I never criticised Sir Jamie Flanagan, because I did not then know the individual. The Press thought that I would attack him because he was a Roman Catholic. But on the day that report appeared I told him personally the truth of the matter. Mr. Harry West, Captain Michael Armstrong, Mr. Ernest Baird and I met the Vice-Chairman of the Police Authority—

Mr. Orme: Recently?

Rev. Ian Paisley: Yes, recently. We asked to see the Police Authority about this issue. We asked a series of questions. We asked, first, whether the Authority was totally happy with the way in which Sir Jamie Flanagan had carried out the duties of his office. The answer was, certainly, Incidentally, Sir Jamie Flanagan is not 63, as the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) tried to make out: he is 61.
We then asked whether there had been a meeting of the Police Authority which had divided 8–8, when the chairman had used his casting vote in favour of asking Sir Jamie to stay on, not indefinitely but until an appointment was made. Then, quite properly, as elected representatives, we asked to meet the whole Police Authority, and that was arranged. But the meeting was suddenly cancelled.
The hon. Member for Belfast, West talked about the police. We all know that the SDLP does not support the police. The SDLP has tied itself to a resolution to that effect. One of the most prominent colleagues of the hon. Member for Belfast, West, Councillor Tom Donnelly, resigned as a result of that resolution.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have no authority to ask any hon. Member who is addressing the House to sit down, but there is an understanding of which I think the hon. Member is aware.

Rev. Ian Paisley: It is all very well for the Minister of State to talk about violation. It is essential that the view of the representatives of Northern Ireland is heard in this House. We have heard a long statement from the Secretary of State. But if this is the way you want to run the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that elected representatives cannot put their views in answer to points made by Ministers, I understand. I will take my seat now and put you out of your agony. As an Ulsterman, I do not wish to put any Welshman, including you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in that position.
No matter what the attitude of Mr. Devlin to Sir Jamie Flanagan, or of the SDLP to the police, there is a united feeling among all sections of the community that Sir Jamie is acceptable. He has done a good job. The Police Authority should open its ears and hear what the people are saying. The Secretary of State should use his influence to see that it knows what has been said tonight.

11.14 p.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: The hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), for whose forbearance we are most grateful—

Rev. Ian Paisley: Thank you.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: —said that the Secretary of State had ended detention without fulfilling the conditions which he had himself laid down, and that is true. The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) criticised the Opposition Front Bench for its attitude to detention. In this Order we are continuing the power to detain and if no Secretary of State ever finds it necessary to make use of the power again, we on these Benches will be very happy—particularly those of us who have visited the Maze, both when it was standing and when it was razed to the ground.
The hon. Member for Belfast, West referred to the Christmas card industry. I well remember receiving a card from the Maze bearing a picture of the barbed wire and a little message saying, "Wish you were here".
Many fewer would be voting in public opinion polls to pull out troops were they wholly confident of the entire Government's will to win and to stick to their

policy, as the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) urged. That is why the Opposition welcome much of what the Secretary of State said. We applaud his rejection of any declaration of intent to withdraw, and we are glad of his resolve that our troops will remain in strength in support of the civil power for so long as they are needed to safeguard our fellow citizens there—in other words, until normal policing can be established throughout the Province.
There has been mention of the chief constableship of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the Secretary of State himself praised the success of the RUC in bringing political and sectarian gangsters and common thugs to book. If I express my own admiration of the achievement of Sir Jamie Flanagan, I am doing what has been done tonight on both sides of the House and what has been done in Northern Ireland in a rare, if not unique, exhibition of political unanimity uniting the SDLP and the UUUC.
Those who urge on Ministers courses of surrender to the IRA and scuttle from Northern Ireland fall broadly into 'two categories—the subversive and the confused. The former, the subversive, betray deliberate and callous indifference. The latter, the confused, betray an unwitting indifference to the lives of our citizens, overwhelmingly peaceable and law abiding as they are, overwhelmingly and democratically committed to the Union and entitled to look to the Government of that Union for protection.
The evacuation of Ulster would, in all probability, precipitate a civil war. It would not stop short at the Irish border. It would not halt at the Irish Sea. I do not have to tell right hon. and hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies that the Antrim coast is about 15 miles from Scotland. The Secretary of State has himself warned us of what he called a "Congo" in Ireland which would spill over into Britain. Such a catastrophe would delight the IRA and those in other parts of the extreme republican movement, some of whom may have their devil's compact with a few elements in so-called Protestant private armies. It would result in the capture of what Churchill once called "the sentinel towers of the Western Approaches". The 32-county Socialist republic desired by both wings of the IRA is not Socialist


as it is conceived by the Secretary of State or by the Minister of State.
But why terrorism? Are these terrorist atrocities committed on both sides of the water "mindless" and "motiveless"? Those are two words used by the Secretary of State. I think not, and I agree with the right hon. Member for Down, South about this. These political terrorist atrocities are coldly calculated in an attempt so to terrify people and their Government as to turn them from their purpose. Conversely, once it is convincingly established that the British Government and people are not to be intimidated, ultimate failure of the terrorist is certain.
So the Opposition support this Order. It was not always quite the same when the roles were reversed and we were sitting on opposite sides. But we in the Conservative Party supported earlier legislation; we support this. It was our duty, and it is our duty. But, equally, it has been the duty of the Opposition in recent weeks and months to express the concern felt not only on these Benches but in our constituencies at the response of the Northern Ireland administration to the so-called cease-fire—vehement reference was made to it by the hon. Member for Antrim, North—and what has appeared to so many people in this country as an uncertain political direction of the campaign against terrorism, whether in South Armagh or elsewhere.
But, that said, I assure the Secretary of State that Her Majesty's Government can count on the co-operation of Her Majesty's Opposition in the measures now necessary to end this cruel terrorism throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

11.20 p.m.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Stanley Orme): When the hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison) disagree with Government policy, they have a perfect right to say so. However, it appears to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to other Ministers and to me that when we take decisions of which they approve, they give wholehearted support, but that when we take difficult decisions, such as to end detention, they leave the

Government in a difficult position and do nor support us.

Mr. Neave: I thought that I had made it clear quite generously that I realised that the Secretary of State felt strongly about this matter, and I hoped he realised that there were others on this side of the House who felt equally strongly about the ending of detention. Perhaps we should leave the matter there. The Minister of State might think it better not to continue on this theme.

Mr. Orme: We have had our exchanges and we shall leave the matter at that. I thought it right to put our point of view on the record as hard as the hon. Gentleman has put his.
I do not think that there will be a vote against this Order, which will be unique. But the debate has been contentious. The hon. Member for Abingdon raised the subject of charges against members of proscribed organisations. There have been 291 charges since August 1973, when the Emergency Provisions Act came into force—50 for membership alone and 241 in conjunction with some other charge—while 57 prosecutions were instituted during the eight months from 31st March to 31st October 1975.
Linked with this is in some ways the case of Seamus Twomey, to which the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) referred again. I thought that my right hon. Friend had made it clear that when he stopped signing interim custody orders the power of the Army to arrest in that regard was removed. What was not removed was the action of the police in relation to any offence that they considered had been committed by any person in Northern Ireland.
If the Army were to arrest such a person, he would be handed over to the RUC. No instructions were issued by the Government. The security forces were free to operate. The myth perpetrated in Northern Ireland, not least by the hon. Member for Antrim, North, does no service to the security forces. The hon. Member may think that he is attacking my right hon. Friend, but he is attacking the security forces—the RUC and the Army.

Mr. John Carson: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree


that the Secretary of State has made it clear to the House that he preferred to put responsibility for law and order more and more on the RUC? Would not he also agree that many areas, especially where Twomey was reported to have been seen in the company of the British Army, are non-go areas for the RUC?

Mr. Orme: The House well understands that the hon. Gentleman is talking about difficult areas for policing. This is one of the problems we are trying to overcome. We are trying to get the police into those areas. But no restriction was put on the Army. If anyone was operating outside the law, he would be arrested and handed over to the RUC.
The hon. Member for Abingdon mentioned the number of people released from detention who returned to violence. Of course the Government are concerned about this. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the figure of 5 per cent. This is an accurate figure at present. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that, although that figure is regrettable, it is considerably lower than the figure for people released in Britain for what may be termed "normal" crime. The number of those who have returned to violence is very much higher than the 5 per cent. that we are talking about. We hope that the figure can be kept below that, but the present figures do not give the Government any concern as such.
The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) dealt particularly with the difficult situation in South Armagh. His logic was referred to earlier. However, his logic and the blinding reason he brings to bear on the situation does not measure up to the reality in South Armagh. He talked about an iron curtain, or an iron wall, or a division. One of the great problems in this area, which is not heavily populated, is that in certain key areas the population are hostile to the State and all it stands for. There is support there for certain activities. The security forces have to take that into account, apart from the terrain and the existence of the border.
Reference has been made to the support we are getting from the Garda vis-a-vis the RUC at the moment. Passports, barriers and the blowing up of roads will not resolve this problem. There has to be a political solution that defuses the

situation. The terrorists must be defeated. That is why the Army is there, and that is what it will continue to do. However, we must move to a political solution.
On the argument about gangsterism and people not taking part in political activity, the right hon. Gentleman said that at base the crimes were political. I ask him to reflect on this, because it means that he underwrites political status and special category prisoners.

Mr. Powell: No, of course not.

Mr. Orme: It does. The right hon. Gentleman does not do that personally, but this is the interpretation that will be placed upon it in Northern Ireland when we come to face this difficult problem next year, when the Government will be grappling with this problem.
I welcome the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) about detention. We hope this will mean that the two communities can start to work together and that the feeling of co-operation will spread right across Northern Ireland, including among the police and all other aspects of society. We believe that there has been some positive movement and we ask the House to support the Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Northern Ireland (Various Emergency Provisions) (Continuance) (No. 2) Order 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 27th November, be approved

Orders of the Day — OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT

Ordered,
That, notwithstanding the Order of the House of 22nd November in the last Session of Parliament relating to nominations of members of the Select Committee on Overseas Development, Mr. Richard Luce be discharged from the Committee and Mr. Michael Marshall be added to the Committee for the remainder of this Parliament:

Ordered,
That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

Orders of the Day — HOUSE OF COMMONS (SERVICES)

Ordered,
That, notwithstanding the Order of the House of 15th November in the last Session of Parliament relating to nomination of members of the Select Committee on House of Commons


(Services), Mr. Clement Freud be discharged from the Committee and Mr. Cyril Smith be added to the Committee for the remainder of this Parliament:

Ordered,
That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Shape.]

Orders of the Day — COLLEGE OF ALL SAINTS (LONDON)

11.30 p.m.

Mrs. Joyce Butler: I am very grateful for the opportunity to raise on the Adjournment the question of the College of All Saints, which is greatly valued in my constituency and in the surrounding area and which is threatened with closure.
The background to the situation, as I understand, is that to comply with national policy for a reduction in teacher training places the Church of England agreed to reduce the number of its student teacher places from 19,000 in 1971 to 10,000 in 1981.
The Department of Education and Science, which has the final say in these matters, had previously proposed that three Church colleges should close. These were Culham in Oxfordshire, St. Peter's in Birmingham and Hockerill at Bishop Stortford. However, a Church education conference last Easter took the view that such closures should not be decided hastily and that a national strategy for Church colleges should be developed.
The working party concerned with this matter ensured that representatives of the three colleges threatened with closure were heard, but the other colleges had to submit their views by written answers to a brief questionnaire.
Therefore, it came as a complete bombshell when the working party reported in September recommending the closing of four colleges, of which All Saints in Tottenham, which had received no word of warning and had no opportunity to make representations, was one. Although the college immediately

asked to make personal representations to the Board of Education of the Church, this was refused.
Considerable concern about the decision, and also about the procedure, followed, has been expressed by the maney people who know and value the work of All Saints. The matter was also subsequently raised at the recent meeting of the Church Synod on 5th December. As I understand the result of this meeting—I have had only a second-hand account over the telephone of what happened—apparently the decision of this further meeting was to give All Saints a deferred threat of closure. The college would be given an intake in 1976 and 1977 which would slightly reduce the annual intake of the other Church colleges for those two years. This would be without prejudice to the numbers already recommended for Church colleges in 1981.
Although the Board of Education now accepts that All Saints should remain as an active institution, it agreed that the only way to enable All Saints to continue beyond 1981 was for the Department of Education and Science to increase the total allocation of teacher training colleges and Church colleges. I believe that the Board made certain suggestions as to how this might be done within the confines of the Department's policy. So, although the situation at All Saints is not as bleak as it appeared to be a week ago, it is still far from satisfactory with this merely probationary right to continue to exist.
It surely is unreasonable to expect the college, alone of the Church colleges, to recruit students against a background of a continued, though deterred, threat of closure. This is all the more unreasonable in view of the unique contribution that the college is making in this inner-city area where the problems of a multi-cultural society are most acute. It is the only Anglican college in North London. One of the students has described it as "the Church in action" in North London. It has important specialisms, particularly in multi-cultural education, and its situation in a multi-racial district makes it especially suitable for this work. It is important that 75 per cent. of the students, when they leave the college, remain to teach in the London area.
Its basic teacher training course is strongly geared to the needs of those working with children from deprived urban areas, and a new diploma in multiracial education has just been approved by the Department of Education and Science.
Strong moves have been made in recent years to diversify courses, and work is now being done for social workers and youth leaders. Much in-service training is organised by the college, and there are plans for a professional in-service training centre immediately adjacent to the college, which can serve Haringey, in which it is situated, and its adjacent London boroughs.
A joint academic working party of staff from All Saints and the Tottenham College of Technology is planning joint courses, some of which have already started, whereby staff from each college work together on certain courses for the benefit of the students. The students themselves voluntarily undertake a wide range of social work in the surrounding community—after-school clubs, tapes for the blind, English teaching of immigrants, the remedial teaching of gipsies, help for elderly people, and so on.
An important factor in the life of the college is that many of the students are already resident in the area and know its problems at first hand. Here, I should declare a personal interest, since my own daughter took a teacher training and B.Ed. course at All Saints and is now teaching at a multi-racial school in the borough.
In this connection, an ex-student makes an important point when she writes:
There is still a shortage of teachers in many parts of the country, including London, where many teachers cannot afford to live, especially when they marry and wish to buy a house. So London depends heavily on colleges like All Saints to provide a supply of young teachers who have formed their friendships and wish to stay in the area as long as they can afford to do so. The challenge of working in a multiracial and deprived area is immense, but many past members of the college face it with great spirit.
The local education committee and Haringey council strongly back the college and have passed unanimous resolutions of support for All Saints, as also has Waltham Forest Education Committee. The Bishops of London and Edmonton—with their first-hand know-

ledge of the area—have expressed themselves strongly against any closure. MPs from all the neighbouring constituencies over a wide area, some of whom would have been here tonight if the debate had not been so late, have also asked to be associated with this debate.
They are my hon. Friends the Members for Edmonton (Mr. Graham) and Tottenham (Mr. Atkinson), whose constituencies closely adjoin the college, the hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry), and my hon. Friend the Member from as far afield as Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman).
My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, who has her own special knowledge of the difficulties of education in London, will, I am sure, agree that AP Saints should not remain in this invidious position. As she knows, the final decision about the future of the college rests with her Department. I recently took a deputation of education committee members to see her colleague in another place, and we were very kindly received. I hope very much that now that the college has been given a limited reprieve by the Church the Minister will be able to make the crucial decision about its continued viability as quickly as possible and enable it to continue the work that it is doing without fear for the future.
I urge my hon. Friend to use any influence she can to this end. I know that she cannot say anything definite about this tonight, because the decision has yet to be made, but I hope that she will be able, in reply, to make some kind of helpful comment to the college. Everyone concerned is extremely worried about the present situation and a word of hope from her would be very much appreciated. I ask my hon. Friend to throw out some lifeline to a college which is doing an excellent job and which has very great support. It gives to the local community and it helps the local community, and the local community very much wants it to continue.

11.40 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Joan Lestor): I have long known of the interest of my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) in this college and she has pleaded most eloquently that it be allowed to continue its role in teacher


training. As my hon. Friend said, she has already led a deputation to see my noble Friend the Minister of State. The supporters of All Saints College—their numbers are considerable—are very fortunate in having a Member of Parliament who is so actively interested in its future. As she said, no decision has yet been taken by my right hon. Friend to stop teacher training at this college. Therefore, as has already been said, the purpose of this debate is to try to influence a decision that is pending rather than to change one that has been taken.
The House may appreciate a few comments by way of background. For almost three years the Department, local authorities, voluntary bodies and the colleges themselves have been engaged in a reorganisation of the colleges of education. The reorganisation has two aims: first, to bring teacher education into closer contact with higher education generally and, secondly, to reduce substantially the number of teacher training places so as to bring the output of trained teachers into line with forecast demand.
Originally, the intention was to reduce the number of places to 80,000 in 1981 from a present figure of 114,000. In March of this year, however, the number of places to be planned for 1981 was further reduced to 60,000 on the evidence of the latest forecasts of the birth rate. This further reduction exacerbated the difficulties of the reorganisation and made it inevitable that teacher training would have to cease at a number of colleges, both maintained and voluntary. The Church of England entirely accepts that its colleges must bear a fair share of the reduction and their allocation for 1981, at about 10,000 places or about one-sixth of the total, reflects their historical share.
The Church of England Board of Education has drawn up proposals for the future of its colleges based on the 1981 allocation of about 10,000 places. The proposals recommend that teacher training should be given up as soon as practicable at three colleges—Hockerill College in Hertfordshire, Sarum St. Michael

in Wiltshire, and St. Peter's Saltley in Birmingham. But the College of All Saints has been singled out for rather different treatment. It is not proposed that teacher training should cease there as soon as may be but that students should be admitted in September 1976 and September 1977. With four-year courses the last students would leave the college in the summer of 1981 when, unless other arrangements are made, the college would close for teacher training. The Board of Education is suggesting that it could be kept open after 1981 by my right hon. Friend agreeing to increase the Church's 1981 allocation beyond 10,000 places.
These proposals have been received only within the last few days and officials of my Department are to discuss them with the Board of Education tomorrow. Therefore, I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates that there is very little that I can say about the likely outcome of the discussion at this stage.
However, I should like to add that I happily acknowledge the value of the work done by All Saints in, as my hon. Friend said, a densely populated and deprived urban area which is also multi-racial, and it has made a very big contribution in that respect. Sadly, however, some colleages must give up teacher training and in this there is inevitably some loss. Whether, in the end, All Saints must be one of these or whether it is thought right to keep it going and some way is found to do this remains to be seen. Decisions about the Church colleges are now urgent, if only to end the anxiety which uncertainty brings to all involved, not least the college staffs. Time must, however, be allowed for those concerned to make representations to my right hon. Friend if they wish, but that done, he will reach his conclusions about All Saints and the other Church colleges as quickly as possible. I shall see that my hon. Friend is informed of the decision as soon as it is made.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fifteen minutes to Twelve o'clock.